MANCHESTER – Hundreds of mourners gathered in wind and rain Friday for a vigil that combined grief and defiance in the remembrance of two men who were killed when a knife-wielding assailant attacked their synagogue in the English city of Manchester .

Standing behind the police cordon that still surrounds the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in the city’s Crumpsall neighborhood, the mourners said they felt forgotten by a society that has allowed antisemitism in the U.K. to grow unchallenged over the last two years.

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Politicians and other leaders have failed to reject anti-Jewish speech or protect Jews from hate crimes, they said.

“We are Jews, but we are English. We have lived in Manchester for 150 years. We belong here," Simon Burton, who works in sale

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