A new Holocaust memorial in Paris was inaugurated by French President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday, two days ahead of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

In an address to dignitaries and survivors, the president described anti-Semitism as a "perversion that kills" and pledged French support for Israel, a country whose existence, he said, was justified by the suffering of Jews in World War II.

France has seen a rise in recent years of insults and attacks on Jewish people and property, most of it attributed to young Muslim men angry about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

"I want to say again that anti-Semitism has no place in France. Anti-Semitism is not a point of view. It is a perversion, a perversion that kills. It is a hatred whose roots go to the very depths of evil. No resurgence can be tolerated.”

After his election in 1995, Chirac became the first French leader to acknowledge France’s participation in the deportation of Jews to the extermination camps. The Vichy regime then collaborated with the nazi regime. 

In his speech at the Memorial, he stated again that “France must recognize its responsibility”.

Europe’s Yad Vashem

Chirac looks at pictures of French Jews sent to Nazi death camps

Roger Cukierman, President of CRIF , the official representative body of the French Jewish community, welcomed Chirac’s statements at the Memorial for deported Jews.

“The words of President Chirac really echo the Jews’ concerns”, Cukierman told the AFP news agency, calling them “an important and deeply moving moment”.

“President Chirac has had very strong words”, Cukierman stressed.

Europe’s Yad Vashem

The memorial, which opens to the public on Thursday is situated in the historic Jewish quarter in the Marais district. It is an expansion of two long-standing institutions: the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr and the Centre for Contemporary Jewish Documentation.

Described as "museum, place of memory and documentation centre," the memorial is meant to become Europe's main reference point on the Jewish Holocaust, the equivalent of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Holocaust Museum in Washington. It includes a "Wall of Names" that commemorates the tens of thousands of Jews deported to their deaths from France. Nearly all were killed, mostly at Auschwitz.

"(The memorial) will help in teaching a story that continues to haunt our everyday life, but it will also encourage reflection on tolerance, liberty and democracy by focussing on a crime that is unique in human history," according to its president Eric de Rothschild.

Inside, the centrepiece remains the crypt which was built in 1956 to contain the ashes of unknown victims brought from Nazi death camps.