A Frightening Look at the Rise of Anti-Semitism in France – Laura Fairrie’s new documentary ‘Spiral’ examines the atmosphere in France, where hate crimes against Jews are on the rise. | Daily Beast

Anti-Semitism is on the rise, and Americans need only look at their own commander-in-chief—a man willing to dub neo-Nazis “very fine people” and hire the likes of Steve Bannon—to witness that trajectory firsthand. Nowhere is this alarming trend felt more urgently, however, than in Europe, and particularly in France, home to the largest Jewish population on the continent (500,000), and fourth largest in the world, and the location of numerous attacks against Jews in recent years, be it the stabbing death of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, in her Paris apartment, or the 2015 slaughter of four Jewish patrons of a kosher “Hypercacher” that was linked to the Charlie Hebdo killings. With an average of nearly two attacks against Jews per week, France has become the epicenter of our era’s new anti-Jewish hostility.