Fewer than 100 returned

The Guardian reported on the march in memory of Mireille Knoll on Wednesday.

Silent marches are taking place in Paris and other large French cities in memory of an 85-year-old woman who survived the Holocaust but was stabbed to death last week, in what is being investigated as an antisemitic attack.

A huge crowd walks during a silent march in Paris, France, in commemoration of 85-year-old Jewish woman Mireille Knoll

Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA

After killing Mireille Knoll, her attackers set her local authority flat alight in a poor area of the French capital. Two men, aged 22 and 29 – one of them a neighbour known to the victim since he was a child, have been arrested and placed under formal investigation.

Family members and friends gather at the funeral of Mireille Knoll, who was stabbed to death in her home

Photograph: Christophe Ena/AP

Other marches were due to be held in the French cities of Lyon, Marseille and Strasbourg.

Knoll fled occupied Paris at the age of nine, narrowly escaping the infamous Vel d’Hiv roundup of Jewish families by French police on behalf of the Nazis. Around 13,000 people, including more than 4,000 children, were herded into the Vel d’Hiv velodrome in Drancy, a northeastern suburb of the French capital, in 1942. They were then deported to Auschwitz – fewer than 100 returned.

After travelling to southern Europe and then Canada, Knoll returned to Paris. Even after her grandchildren moved to Israel, she remained.

Mirellie Knoll

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