Silent marches are taking place in Paris and other large French cities in memory of an 85-year-old woman who survived the Holocaust but was stabbed to death last week, in what is being investigated as an antisemitic attack.

After killing Mireille Knoll, her attackers set her local authority flat alight in a poor area of the French capital. Two men, aged 22 and 29 – one of them a neighbour known to the victim since he was a child, have been arrested and placed under formal investigation.

Friends and family had urged French people to turn out for the silent marches, arguing the killing was not just an outrage perpetrated against a member of the Jewish community but against the community as a whole.

The killing of Knoll last Friday has raised questions about France’s failure to tackle resurgent antisemitism. Last year, Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Orthodox Jewish woman, was beaten and thrown out of the window of her home.

French president Emmanuel Macron attended Knoll’s funeral on the outskirts of Paris on Wednesday after paying tribute to the hero gendarme, Arnaud Beltrame. In his speech at the state ceremony honouring the fallen gendarme, killed by a suspected Islamist gunman, Macron said Knoll’s killers had “murdered an innocent and vulnerable woman because she was Jewish ... and in doing so, profaned our sacred values and our history.”

The march in Paris on Wednesday evening sparked political rows after the far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen and hard-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced they would ignore requests from Jewish leaders to stay away.

Family members and friends gather at the funeral of Mireille Knoll, who was stabbed to death in her home. Photograph: Christophe Ena/AP

Leaders of CRIF, the umbrella group for French Jewish communities, had indicated neither were welcome, but Knoll’s son Daniel contradicted the organisation saying “everyone without exception” could attend.

“CRIF is being political, I’m opening my heart to all those who have a mother. Everyone is concerned. Anyone with a mother knows what I’m talking about …”, he told RMC radio a few hours before his mother’s funeral.

A man stands in front of a picture of Mireille Knoll placed on the fence surrounding her building in Paris. A message condemns the alleged antisemitic motive of her killing. Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

Other marches were due to be held in the French cities of Lyon, Marseille and Strasbourg.

Knoll fled occupied Paris at the age of nine, narrowly escaping the infamous Vel d’Hiv roundup of Jewish families by French police on behalf of the Nazis. Around 13,000 people, including more than 4,000 children, were herded into the Vel d’Hiv velodrome in Drancy, a northeastern suburb of the French capital, in 1942. They were then deported to Auschwitz – fewer than 100 returned.

After travelling to southern Europe and then Canada, Knoll returned to Paris. Even after her grandchildren moved to Israel, she remained.

The government in France, which has Europe’s largest Jewish community, presented a plan to tackle racism and antisemitism earlier this month with a campaign on social media and in schools.