On Yom Kippur eve, vandals spray-painted swastikas on the walls of the Beit Meir synagogue in the Corsica’s capital of Ajaccio, in an attack which rocked the small Jewish community.

Corsica, a tiny island in the Mediterranean, is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the Italian island of Sardinia. It is a French territory.

Corsica’s Jewish community today is relatively young and very small. Corsica has about 300,000 people, with a population of only several hundred Jews. In the past, however, it had a much larger Jewish community, but the vast majority left the island for France or other European countries. Thousands of Jews were deported from the island during the Holocaust.

The Jewish community’s origins are in the 19th century, when the first Jews from France arrived on the island, about 100 years after French rule was established. Like 90% of Corsica’s residents, the Jews living there in the past, and currently, are almost all French citizens.

The incident on Yom Kippur eve has sent a wave of fear through the small Jewish community, which is already on edge because of other anti-Semitic incidents in France and throughout Europe.