Hyper Cacher victims laid to rest
Just as they died together, the four victims of last Friday’s kosher supermarket attack in Paris were buried together, in a heart-wrenching joint funeral in Jerusalem. The relatives of Yoav Hattab, Yohan Cohen, Philippe Braham and Francois-Michel Saada stood side by side, comforting each other and supporting each other through Tuesday’s long teary ceremony.
They had all decided that they wanted their loved ones laid to rest in Israel. Though most of their community was 2000 miles away in Paris, some 5000 locals – many of them complete strangers – turned out to support them and show solidarity.
“I cry now and you are all crying with me,” said Valerie Braham, the widow of Phillipe Braham, addressing the crowd. She described her husband as “a man who thought of others before himself, an excellent husband and father who was crazy for his kids and lived just for them”.
People waved banners with pictures of the victims saying “I am dead because I am Jewish,” and one Chassidic man tried to capture his anguish by attending dressed in sackcloth – the mourning attire of biblical times.
The crowd fell silent when the four stretchers carrying the bodies, each draped in an Israeli flag, arrived. Shortly afterwards, a representative of each family started proceedings by reciting a blessing which states that they put their faith in God, “the true judge”.
The sense of tragedy became deeper as the eulogies progressed, and more was said about the deceased, with stories of their hopes and dreams. A recurring theme was that they wanted to spend time in Israel, as tourists or immigrants, and instead they arrived as corpses.
One of them, Saada, had actually bought and furnished a home in Israel, which he will never get to live in. Israel’s President
Reuven Rivlin discussed this in his eulogy, citing the biblical passage which says: “What man is there, who has built a new house and has not yet inaugurated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle.”
Family and friends of the victims were still in shock at the news of the deaths. Esther Junger, the great aunt of 22-year-old Cohen, told The AJN how she knew nothing of her family tragedy until after Shabbat, and then heard from his mother and “cried hysterically”.
She couldn’t come to terms with it, she said. Naomi Seror said the shockwaves through her social group, who grew up with Cohen in Paris, are “just terrible”.
She said: “It’s a neighbourhood of almost only Jews, all the youth are very close, and he was one of us.” As she talked, a friend interjected to say: “He was too young to die – far too young.”
The Israelis among the mourners said that they regarded the deceased as their own. “It doesn’t make a difference to me that they are not Israelis, they are Jews,” said 18-year-old student Yosef Yehoshua, explaining that he felt deep pain that “because of our religion people are killing us”.
The French government’s representative at the funeral, Ecology Minister Segolene Royal, declared in her speech that “anti-Semitism has no place in France,” and said: “I want to assure you of the unfailing determination of the French government to fight against all forms and acts of anti-Semitism.”
But Israeli leaders believe that the Jew-hatred highlighted by the attack is too widespread to be dealt with by France alone.
Rivlin challenged European leaders to take control, saying: “Regardless of what may be the sick motives of terrorists, it is incumbent upon the leaders of Europe to act, and commit to firm measures to return a sense of security and safety to the Jews of Europe; in Toulouse, in Paris, in Brussels, or in Burgas.
“We cannot allow it to be the case, that in the year 2015, 70 years since the end of the Second World War, Jews are afraid to walk in the streets of Europe with skullcaps and tzitzit. It cannot be allowed, that we should see in the news, frequent vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, of Jews being beaten, and of synagogues and communities under attack. It is no longer possible to ignore or remain ambiguous, or to act weakly or with leniency against the rabid anti-Semitic incitement. Ignorance and violence will not simply go away on their own.”
NATHAN JEFFAY
For full coverage of the Paris terror attacks, see this week’s AJN.
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