An elderly French Jew born in Tunisia was among those slaughtered Wednesday in a terror attack in Paris.
Jewish caricature artist Georges Wolinski, 81, was one of 12 people shot and killed in the attack at the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ satiric magazine offices.
Wolinsky was the son of Siegried Wolinski, a Polish Jew, and Lola Bembaron, a Tunisian Jewish woman. He moved with his parents to France at the age of 13.
Although he began his college life as a student of architecture, he eventually switched to cartooning and by 1960 had co-founded a satirical magazine with a friend. The well-known cartoonist went on to work with leading French publications such as Paris Match, Le Nouvel Observateur, and L’Humanite, as well as Charlie Hebdo.
Jewish leaders in Europe were among the first to condemn the attack. They pointed out the event was a sign of what may soon become a potential tsunami of terror on the continent.
European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor said in a statement that the slaughter was “the beginning of a wave of terror” in Europe. He called the attack part of a “war against freedom of speech and the European way of life, which has already seen Jewish children gunned down at school and people murdered in cold blood while visiting a museum in Brussels.”
The president of the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, Sammy Ghozlan, warned the attack constituted a “wake up” call.
“France must wake up to the danger of Islamism and the terror it brings all over the world: In Paris, Toulouse, Sarcelles, Brussels, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, jihadists are acting on the same radical Islamist ideology that is used to manipulate them,” he said.