Thursday marked the fifth anniversary of a deadly terror attack at a kosher supermarket in Paris.
On the afternoon of Jan. 9, 2015, shortly before the start of Shabbat, Amedy Coulibaly — who had pledged allegiance to ISIS — burst in to the Hyper Cacher at Porte de Vincennes in the French capital’s 20th arrondissement and took more than a dozen hostages.
A multi-hour standoff with police ensued, at the end of which the heavily-armed Coulibaly was killed in an exchange of fire.
Four hostages were found murdered inside the store.
The victims — all Jews — were Philippe Braham, 45, Yohan Cohen, 22, Yoav Hattab, 21, and François-Michel Saada, 64.
The attack occurred two days after 12 people were massacred by a pair of Islamist gunmen at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
A memorial ceremony — organized by the French Jewish communal organization CRIF — was held on Thursday evening in front of the Hyper Cacher.
The Paris office of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) tweeted an homage to those who lost their lives at the supermarket, saying, “Remember their names and faces, rather than the terrorist who cowardly murdered them simply because they were Jews.”
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) tweeted, “Five years ago, four Jews were killed by an Islamist gunman in a kosher supermarket in Paris. Five years later we continue to mourn them and stand in solidarity with France which suffered devastating losses from numerous terror attacks. May their memory be a blessing.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tweeted, “Today marks five years since the deadly antiemitic terror attack at the Hyper Cacher kosher market in France. The memories of those lost spur us to continue fighting antisemitism and violent extremism wherever it may be.”
Earlier this week, France’s Channel 2 aired a documentary about Lassana Bathily — the Malian-born Muslim worker at the Hyper Cacher who heroically ushered a number of shoppers to safety during the attack.
The Algemeiner (c) 2019 . Barney Breen-Portnoy
{Matzav.com}
