The silent decorum of a march to honor a woman who survived Nazi horrors only to be stabbed to death last week in an alleged anti-Semitic attack was shattered Wednesday, with crowds shouting "Nazi!" and other insults at France's National Front party leader Marine Le Pen.
Mireille Knoll's death had taken on national importance, reminding France of both historic anti-Semitism and its resurgence there in recent years.
Thousands of people had joined in the evening march from the Place de la Nation to Knoll's Paris apartment, where the 85-year-old was found dead with 11 stab wounds, Friday. The apartment was set ablaze after the attack and her body badly burnt.
The tribute was one of many held throughout the day in cities across France to honor Knoll and denounce racism.
Divisions soon surfaced, however, at the Paris march, which both Le Pen and far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon had insisted on attending despite warnings from France's leading Jewish group that organized the march, the CRIF, that they would not be welcome. CRIF President Francois Kalifat justified their exclusion by saying the political extremes had anti-Semites in their ranks.
"They should first clean out their own house," he said.
"Anti-Semites are overrepresented in the far Left and the far Right, making those parties ones that you don't want to be associated with," CRIF director Francis Kalifat told RTL radio. "Therefore they are not welcome."
His comments underscore the enduring alarm among France's 400,000-strong Jewish community over anti-Semitism, which Interior Minister Gerard Collomb on Tuesday described as a cancer that must not be allowed to eat away at the nation.
The bid to exclude the two political chieftains was firmly opposed by Knoll's son Daniel.
Le Pen and Melenchon joined the march but they met a hostile reception from participants and when tensions threatened to boil over they pulled out. Le Pen later managed to rejoin the demonstration.
Shouts of "Nazi" were hurled at Le Pen, whose father and the founder of her National Front Party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been convicted of anti-Semitism and racism. She has since broken ties with the elder Le Pen.
However, France's highest court provided a reminder of the party's past on Tuesday when it upheld the conviction of her father for describing the Nazi gas chambers as a "detail" of history. It confirmed a 30,000 euro ($37,000) fine against him.
Noting that Knoll's son, Daniel, had said he wanted to encourage national unity and that everyone "without exception" was welcome at the march, Le Pen said of the insults, "I find the behavior here undignified toward the [grieving] family."
"We've got our place here. Once again they [the CRIF] have got the wrong enemy. We've been fighting Islamist anti-Semitism for years," Le Pen said defiantly, despite the hostile reception she received.
"Her son said he wanted everyone there, so we are here," she said.
Daniel Knoll, looking sad and tired, later bemoaned the hateful divisions at a march meant to unite.
"Today, we all should have been united, all of France," he said on BFM-TV. "Who cares which party? I could care less. ... It's inadmissible."
Melenchon said, "We did our duty" by coming to show compassion, adding that the real subject of the march was "this woman, killed barbarically."
The march followed Knoll's funeral on Wednesday, where French President Emmanuel Macron had showed up unannounced. The president had mentioned Knoll in a speech at a military ceremony to honor a gendarme killed last week in an Islamist attack. The president said Knoll's attacker "murdered an innocent and vulnerable woman because she was Jewish, and in doing so profaned our sacred values and our history." He decried the "barbaric" views that fueled Knoll's killing, as well as the terrorist who killed four people in a rampage in southern France.
Earlier Wednesday, vandals scrawled anti-Israel graffiti and ransacked the offices of a Jewish student group at the University of Paris' Pantheon-Sorbonne campus. Sacha Ghozlan, president of the French Jewish Students Union, said it was unclear who was behind it.
Prosecutors have filed preliminary charges against two people for murder motivated by anti-Semitism in Knoll's slaying, including a neighbor Knoll had hosted regularly, according to her son.
Authorities have not released the names of the two men in custody but have said the chief suspect is a 29-year-old with a past conviction who lived in the same building.
In 1942, Knoll was forced to flee Paris with her family at age 9 to escape a notorious World War II roundup that saw 13,000 Jews deported to the Auschwitz death camp. After the war, she returned to France and spent most of her life in the eastern Paris apartment where she was killed, according to her son.
Israel's Foreign Ministry condemned Knoll's murder and said it "underlines the need to continue combating anti-Semitism in all its variations."
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum urged French and European officials to "redouble efforts to combat the rise in anti-Semitism plaguing much of the continent."
France's government presented a plan earlier this month to fight racism and anti-Semitism, focusing on social media and prevention in schools.
