On Jan 12, 1944, the Gestapo occupying the French city of Bordeaux despatched its Jews, who had been rounded up and imprisoned in their own majestic synagogue, to the death camps.

Fast-forward exactly 70 years and a photograph shows a group of youngsters standing outside the same synagogue, performing the now infamous "quenelle" gesture invented by the controversial French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala in 2005 and exported to Britain by soccer player Nicolas Anelka.

The backdrop of the picture is a large stone plaque engraved A Nos Martyrs (to our martyrs) and bearing the names of the 365 people deported from inside the synagogue. In all, 5,000 Bordeaux Jews — out of a community of 6,200 — perished at the hands of the Nazis.