The result of accelerated wear or that of an act of vandalism allegedly committed on the 5th anniversary of the terrible Charlie-Hebdo attack? Relatives of cartoonist Georges Wolinski, one of the 12 victims of the attack on the editorial staff of the satirical newspaper on January 7, 2015, have been wondering since the (recent) discovery of a strange degradation on his tombstone.
The word "Charlie" erased
The stele, located in the 4th division of the vast Montparnasse cemetery (14th), bears an epitaph reminding that the cartoonist was "murdered during the attack on Charlie-Hebdo". And the word "Charlie", which can now be distinguished only from the "C", seems to have been deleted ... while the rest of the inscription is intact. Stone excavated over a few millimeters could have been damaged, with a tool, by an anonymous hand.
“No words in front of the desecration of the tomb of Georges Wolinski in the Montparnasse cemetery. Finally if, a: nausea, “tweeted press cartoonist Louison, in the middle of last week. His message, followed by the hashtag jesuischarlie, sparked an outpouring of outraged reactions. On the side of the town hall of Paris (on which the cemetery depends) we do not confirm, for the moment, an act of vandalism in Montparnasse.
The result of high pressure cleaning?
The City has requested an internal investigation to try to determine the origin of the damage. According to specialists, they could be due to a succession of high pressure cleanings on the burial. "It is impossible that it is only that," say two pensioners who live next to the Montparnasse cemetery where they go very frequently to flower certain graves. "We discovered the scratched letters on January 7. A week before, they were intact ”, they assure, formal.
A voluntary degradation for the widow
Maryse Wolinski, the widow of Georges Wolinski, who went to the cemetery to observe the damage is also convinced that it was caused voluntarily. According to Liberation, she could file a complaint. A few meters from the grave in question, the tomb of the psychoanalyst Elsa Cayat - who was reporting on Charlie-Hebdo and who had also died during the attack on the Kouachi brothers - is intact… But his epitaph did not no reference to Charlie or the drama that took place there in January 2015.