Life goes on in terror-stricken Paris. After extensive renovations, the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket, site of a deadly attack in January, reopened its doors.
The Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris that was attacked by a Muslim terrorist in January, during which four Jews were murdered, reopened on Sunday. Many of the store’s old patrons returned to celebrate its reopening.
“We were stunned by the attack, but there was never any question that we would re-open,” one of the store managers, Laurent Mimoun, told AFP.
Four Jewish men – Yohan Cohen, 22; Yoav Hattab, 21; Phillipe Braham, 45, and Francois-Michel Saada, 55 – were shot dead at the supermarket by ISIS-linked terrorist Amedy Coulibaly on January 9, two days after Muslim brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi murdered 12 people in an attack at the headquarters of the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve attended the reopening of the supermarket, which was repaired after suffering heavy damage during the rescue operation by special forces who killed Coulibaly and freed the staff and shoppers he had taken hostage.
“You can see the layout…. you see the difficulties there were in the intervention,” AFP quotes Cazeneuve as saying after visiting the scene of terror, including the cold storage room where several hostages, including one with a baby, managed to hide from Coulibaly with the help of a Muslim employee.
A new team of staff is working at the supermarket, while employees who survived the bloody attack are free to decide “their new posting” among the group’s chain of stores, the management said, according to AFP.
“With this reopening, we once again reaffirm that life will always be stronger than barbarity,” the Hyper Cacher management said in a statement.
Tensions in Jewish Paris have remained high since the series of attacks against the Jewish population. Although Israel has called on the community to make aliyah (immigrate to Israel), some have chosen to continue their lives there, despite the dangers posed by the rising tide of Islamic extremism and violence.
By: United with Israel Staff
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