French Holocaust Survivor Murdered in Paris

85-year old Mireille Knoll survived the Holocaust but perished from an anti-Semitic act of murder this weekend in Paris.

French authorities say they discovered the Jewish woman's stabbed and charred body Sunday after her apartment was set ablaze by her murderer. She had been stabbed 11 times and the fire ignited intentionally to cover up the crime.

According to the Times of Israel, police arrested two suspects in the murder. One man was Knoll's neighbor and another was a homeless man. 

The Times reports Knoll's granddaughter, Noa Goldfarb wrote on Facebook that a Muslim neighbor murdered her grandmother. 

French authorities decided today to charge the two suspects with anti-Semitic murder.

The Times of Israel reported that one of Knoll's sons said that when his mother was a child in 1942, she evaded a Nazis roundup of 13,000 Parisian Jews who were detained at a cycling track known as Vel d'Hiv. Later, they were taken to a death camp where only 100 of them survived.

French Jews worry this latest incident is part of a recent wave of anti-Semitic attacks against them. 

Last April, police arrested the Muslim neighbor of 66-year old retired physician Sarah Halimi. They said he killed Halimi by throwing her out of a window. During the incident, Kobili Traore of Mali was reportedly overheard shouting "Allahu Akbar" (Allah is greatest). French officials listed the murder as an anti-Jewish hate crime.

Before prosecutors categorized Knoll's murder as an act motivated by anti-Semitism, Arutz Sheva reported French Member of Parliament Meyer Habib said he had no doubt it was an anti-Jewish hate crime.

"For Sarah, it took almost 10 months for the legal authorities to recognize the obvious reality. What about Mireille?" he asked. 

Habib said like Halimi, "Mireille also fell victim to the hatred of Jews which is increasingly seen in the suburbs, against the backdrop of Islamic radicalization, hatred of Israel but also hatred of France."