French police eye anti-Semitism in Holocaust survivor's death

March 26 (UPI) -- French authorities said Monday they will investigate the slaying of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor in Paris as a possible anti-Semitic crime.

Authorities found the body of Mireille Knoll, who lived alone in a Paris apartment, inside her residence after a fire on Friday night, The Guardian reported. An autopsy revealed Knoll sustained multiple stab wounds before the fire.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Monday it was "plausible" someone killed her because she was Jewish, and anti-Semitism needs to be fought on a "fundamental and permanent" basis.

Knoll escaped the roundup of 13,000 Jews in Paris to Nazi death camps in 1942, the BBC reported. She previously complained to police about a neighbor who threatened to set her home on fire.

Police suspect two men, ages 22 and 29, of the crime. One of them has a previous conviction for molesting a 12-year-old girl staying in Knoll's flat.

President Francis Kalifat of the Jewish umbrella organization, Council of Jewish Institutions of France, said in a statement that he had "anger and concern at such barbarism in France in 2018."

The community raised concern about a rise in violent acts against Jews in France in recent years.

A judge confirmed last month that last year's murder of Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Orthodox Jewish woman who was beaten and thrown out her window in the same district of France, was anti-Semitic.