French Rabbi Receives Threat to ‘Punish’ Jews for Complaining

By: JTA

Published: August 23rd, 2012

The chief rabbi of Lyon, Richard Wertenschlag, has received a letter threatening to "punish a Jew for every complaint the Jews make on TV."

The threat came in a two-page letter delivered to Wertenschlag on Aug. 10. It contained two photos of a concentration camp, according to Dr. Richard Prasquier, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, CRIF.

Wertenschlag, who reported the letter to the authorities, opened the letter on Aug. 12, according to CRIF.

The authors of the "small, dense handwritten text" signed with the words "the righteous network."

They added, "Every time you go on television to complain, a Jew - man, woman, child or family - will be punished." Further down, the authors wrote: "See you soon at a synagogue, which has already been chosen."

Wertenschlag called the letter "the expression of anti-Semitic rage and unimaginable hate."

He said he had received an earlier hate letter in April, which was both "anti-Semitic and anti-Arab," but decided not to go to police at the time.

Last month French police arrested two youths in Lyon for allegedly attacking a 17-year-old Jewish boy.

The boy is a student at Ozar Hatorah, a Jewish school in Toulouse where, on March 19, a Muslim extremist murdered three children and a rabbi.