Saturday, June 12, 2010

Sarkozy Apologises for Vandalism in British War Cemetery

THE TELEGRAPH: A dozen British First World War graves have been vandalised with swastikas and SS insignia in northern France, in an act described as an "insult to the memory" of the fallen soldiers.

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Gravestones desecrated with swastikas, seen at the British World War I cemetery in Loos-en-Gohelle, northern France. Photograph: The Telegraph

Vandals covered 12 graves and a monument in pink swastikas, SS insignia and other graffiti in the cemetery of Loos-en-Gohelle, which holds the remains of British and Canadian soldiers fallen in an October 1915 battle there.

President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday said he condemned "with the greatest firmness this odious act", which took place before dawn, and offered "sympathy and solidarity" to soldier's families and the "entire British nation" on behalf of France.

In a letter to the Queen, Mr Sarkozy said that the act was all the more "revolting" as it took place days before he travels to London to celebrate Charles de Gaulle's famous June 18, 1940 appeal from the BBC, in which he called on the French to resist Nazism. >>> Henry Samuel in Paris | Friday, June 11, 2010