Covid pass protesters reference Nazis as they deface French war memorial

Graffiti is ‘insult to the memory of our heroes’, says Emmanuel Macron

Graffiti at Mont-Valerien appears to replicate the styling of the Nazi ‘SS’ insignia (Hauts lieux de la mémoire nationale d'IDF)

A war memorial in France has been defaced with a message against French Covid measures – which also appears to make a reference to Nazi Germany.

The French president and authorities have denounced the act as an “insult to the memory” of the nation’s soldiers.

Mont-Valerien, a memorial to those who lost their lives in the Second World War in a western Paris suburb, was seen with “ANTI PASS” scrawled over it on Monday.

It appears to reference France’s Covid pass sanitaire (health pass), which gives a QR code to people in order to access many venues and events, as well as long-distance public transport journeys, to prove vaccination status or a negative test.

The graffiti on the memorial in Suresnes, western Paris, also appeared to reference the insignia of the Nazi SS paramilitary organisation in the way it was written.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, called the vandalism “an insult to the memory of our heroes and to the memory of the nation”.

“By tarnishing a sacred place for France, it harms what unites us,” he said. “The perpetrators will be found and then judged.”

The memorial pays homage to all deaths during the Second World War, during which the site was used as a place of execution.

Authorities in charge of memorials in Ile-de-France tweeted a picture of the “ANTI PASS” vandalism, saying the “indefensible” action was carried out on Monday morning.

“It is an insult to the memory of the men shot in this place and the men and women who are buried here,” a statement from the Hauts lieux de la mémoire nationale d’IDF (Centres of national memory in the Ile-de-France) read.

“Totalitarian and obscurantist expressions will never have a place here.”

Guillaume Boudy, the mayor of Suresnes, said: “On top of being a reprehensible act, no one will mix the brave fight of those who the memorial honours, with the intentions of the perpetrators of this graffiti.”

France is facing surging Covid infections and rising numbers with the virus seeking medical attention.

Nightclubs have been closed until the new year and social distancing measures – both inside and outside – have been tightened as authorities attempt to get the pandemic under control.