Autumn leaves rustle as Lionel Godmet walks past rows of graves at the Jewish cemetery in Jungholtz in eastern France, their bases fringed with moss but the Hebrew inscriptions clearly visible.
Pinned to his lapel is a badge reading “veilleur de la memoire,” or guardian of memory. The cemetery’s existence is a tribute to a community battered by centuries of history and all but destroyed by the Holocaust.
Yet Godmet himself is not Jewish. He is one of a growing number of individuals in France’s Alsace region who have taken it upon themselves to patrol Jewish cemeteries after a spate of attacks on such sites that have horrified the country.
Godmet describes his volunteer work as a “civic commitment” and likens it to that of watchmen who stand guard over the region’s celebrated hilltop castles.
“It is our heritage and our history,” he said.
Such work has become all the more urgent after the latest attacks on cemeteries in the Alsace region.
Early this month, 107 graves were defaced with swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti at the cemetery in Westhoffen.
French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter afterward that “Jews are and make France” and that “those who attack them, even their graves, are not worthy of the idea we have of France.” His government then announced the creation of an anti-hate crime bureau.
That attack came after 96 tombs were desecrated at a cemetery in Quatzenheim, also in Alsace, in February.
The rising number of anti-Jewish offenses reported to police — up 74 percent last year from 2017 — has caused alarm in the country that is home to the biggest Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe.
Godmet, a religion teacher, is one of 20 “guardians of memory,” a network set up by the regional council in October, informing the authorities of any problems at the cemeteries or their surroundings.
Alsace has 67 Jewish cemeteries, a high number explained by the presence in the past of many rural Jewish communities spread across the region. Now, most of these communities have ceased to exist, making protecting the cemeteries all the more difficult.
The Jews of Alsace represented more than half of France’s Jews in the 18th century, but had to wait until 1791 to regain the right to reside in towns, which had been stripped in the 14th century.
“Today, there are fewer than 20,000 Jews in Alsace of a total of 2 million people, and since the Holocaust, there are no longer any Jews in the countryside,” said Philippe Ichter, who heads a commission promoting religious dialogue in the region, and who initiated the project to guard the cemeteries.
The guardians judge for themselves how often to patrol in the cemeteries, ensuring a minimal presence and alerting the authorities to any problems.
They are advised not to intervene if they come across vandals.
“You can’t put a policeman in every cemetery,” said Francis Laucher, who also volunteers as a watchman at the Jungholtz cemetery along with his wife.
“We are both Alsatians to our core, and how can such things come to pass? Leave the dead in peace!” said Laucher, a retired engineer, as he wandered among the tombs.
“Here we have people who do this in their free time, as volunteers, for a community that is not even theirs,” said Laurent Schilli, secretary general of the Haut-Rhin region’s Jewish council, which oversees the volunteers. “That is saying something.”
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