Nearly 40 tombstones and a monument to Holocaust victims were defaced with swastikas this week at a Jewish in France, The New York Times reported.

According to the Times, 37 tombstones were spray-painted with swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti at a cemetery near Strasbourg, France.

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French officials visited the cemetery on Friday for a ceremony to pay their respects.

France's interior minister, Christophe Castaner, was among the religious and government officials to attend the ceremony.

“When a place of recollection is desecrated, it’s the entire Republic that is sullied,” Castaner said on Twitter shortly after officials visited the cemetery.

“Everything is being done to identify and detain the authors of this desecration,” he continued.

Quand un lieu de recueillement est profané, c’est toute la République qui est souillée.

Je suis venu soutenir ce matin la communauté juive & l’ensemble des habitants d’Herrlisheim après les dégradations antisémites et xénophobes commises en ce cimetière israélite.

Un acte abject. pic.twitter.com/nE3PFSXxoz — Christophe Castaner (@CCastaner) December 14, 2018

According to the news agency Agence-France Presse, Harold Weill, chief rabbi of the France's Bas-Rhin region, said the Jewish community “loves this country, it cherishes it, but it is asking itself questions.”

The vandalism was reportedly discovered on Tuesday, just hours before a gunman opened fire near a Christmas market in Strasbourg, killing three victims.

The desecration of the tombstones also comes a month after the French government reported a sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts in France this year. The country hosts Europe's largest Jewish population.