Poland: Again, an attack on the Jewish cemetery in Czestochowa

Via CFCA:

Czestochowa – In December, antisemitic inscriptions was spray-painted on the gate of the Częstochowa Jewish cemetery.

Now a vandal smash the grave of Rabbi Pinchas Menachem Justman, who died in 1920.

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Ukraine: Anti-Semitic images painted on memorial to desecrated Jewish cemetery

Via JTA:

Unidentified individuals painted anti-Semitic cartoons on a memorial wall in Ukraine that was made of ancient Jewish headstones destroyed by Soviet authorities.

The graffiti found this week in the western city of Kolomyya show a man tossing a Star of David in the trash. The memorial wall commemorates one of three Jewish cemeteries that existed there before they were razed and plundered.

Eduard Dolinsky, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, on Tuesday wrote on Facebook that the act was typical of a recent spate of anti-Semitic vandalism in Ukraine.

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Poland: Amid tensions over the Holocaust, Jewish cemeteries vandalized

Via JTA

Two Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized in Poland amid a fresh diplomatic crisis between that country and Israel over complicity in the Holocaust.

In the city of Świdnica, a suburb of Wroclaw in southwestern Poland, at least 15 headstones were smashed last week at the local Jewish cemetery. Other headstones were painted with black graffiti, including one of a pentagram – a symbol associated with Satanism.

Local police are investigating possible anti-Semitic motives, the website Wmeritum reported.

The cemetery had seen previous incidents, Monika Krawczyk, chairwoman-elect of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“The evil comes back,” she added.

Separately, in Wroclaw the words “Jesus is King” were written on the fence of another Jewish cemetery on Feb. 13. Several locals showed up earlier this week to paint over the slogan, Gazeta Wroclawska reported Sunday.

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France: 80 graves vandalised at Jewish cemetery in eastern France

Via Local:

Swastikas and anti-Semitic tags were found daubed over 80 gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France on Tuesday on the day of nationwide marches against a rise in anti-Semitic attacks.

The damage was discovered on Tuesday morning at a cemetery in the village of Quatzenheim, close to the border with Germany in the Alsace region, a statement from the regional security office said.

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Moldova: Jewish cemetery vandalized

Via Artuz 7:

A Jewish cemetery in Moldova was vandalized by unidentified individuals who painted a swastika on one of the headstones.

The Nazi symbol was discovered Monday at the cemetery in Chisinau, the capital of the East European country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, the news website Point reported Wednesday.

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Poland: Jewish cemetery vandalized for second time in a month

Via Times of Israel:

A Jewish cemetery near Krakow was vandalized for the second time in less than a month, resulting in damage to dozens of headstones.

At least 30 headstones were pushed over, some of them shattered, in the latest incident recorded at the cemetery in Mysłowice, a town located about 40 miles west of Krakow, the Jewish.pl news site reported Tuesday on its Facebook page.

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Greece: Vandals desecrate Jewish tombstones in Athens

Via Jerusalem Post:

Vandals destroyed nine marble Jewish tombstones in an Athens cemetery on Friday night. The headstones appear to have been kicked over and then smashed to pieces, according to a statement issued Saturday night by the Jewish Community of Athens.

“The scene is repulsive and our disappointment is great,” read the statement, which was posted to the Facebook page of the president of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, Minos Moissis, who said he was “very angry.”

“This is not the first time we see the result of a degrading act at our cemetery, but it is the first time we see such an act was organized and planned in part of the cemetery that is not visible from the neighboring houses and with incredible fury,” the statement said. “The view of the results of this abominable act causes us deep sorrow and anger.”

The community group said it would take all available legal steps and had contacted the police, who have launched an investigation.

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Serbia: Dozens of headstones destroyed in Jewish cemetery

Via Jewish News:

Two youths in Serbia have been arrested on suspicion that they toppled or smashed 47 headstones at the Jewish cemetery in the northern city of Pančevo.

In the attack, carried out on 8 December, the youths allegedly jumped over the cemetery fence and proceeded to push down the headstones, causing several to smash, the news site 021 reported. Police were notified of the vandalism last week, according to the report. It did not say whether the youths targeted the cemetery because it was for Jews.

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Ukraine: Vandals desecrate hasidic rebbe's grave

Via CFCA:

Storozhynets - The grave of Rabbi Yechiel Michel Hager, a grandson of the first Vizhnitz Rebbe, known as the Storozhynets Rebbe, was vandalized in the Ukraine. The grave had only last year been located, renovated and reconstructed.

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Italy: Jewish, Catholic headstones smashed in main Rome cemetery

Via i24 News:

Four unidentified youth vandalized and smashed dozens of gravestones and memorials in the Catholic and Jewish sections of one of Rome’s largest cemeteries on Thursday, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

A caretaker discovered the damage during an early Friday morning inspection before the Verano cemetery opened.

The perpetrators toppled and defaced Christian crosses and Stars of David, along with smashing granite headstones, tombs, memorial plaques, and vases, the JTA reported. Italian media reports said that surveillance cameras documented the youthful perpetrators running amok and racing through the cemetery wrecking havoc.

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Czech Republic: Tombstone of famed rabbi damaged in Prostejov

Via KSL (h/t CFCA):

A tombstone of a well-known rabbi at a former Jewish cemetery in the Czech town of Prostejov has been damaged.

A Jewish foundation said Friday it discovered earlier this week that the tombstone of Prostejov Rabbi Zvi Horowitz, who died in 1816, was broken into two pieces.

It was installed at the site in 2013 by New York philanthropist Louis Kestenbaum.

The cemetery was destroyed during the Nazi occupation and is currently a public park. It has been controversial due to recent efforts to rehabilitate the site after some of the original tombstones were discovered in Prostejov and nearby villages.

Many locals, including town officials, oppose any changes.

The controversy has been accompanied by an unusual outburst of anti-Semitism.

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Romania: Ten Jewish tombstones smashed in capital

Via Times of Israel:

An anti-Semitism organization said Tuesday that vandals smashed 10 tombstones at a cemetery in the Romanian capital in “a premeditated act.”

The Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism in Romania said the tombstones were broken into pieces at the Jewish cemetery in southern Bucharest overnight Monday, Holocaust Remembrance Day, when the millions of Jews killed by the Nazis are commemorated in Israel.

The center called for an investigation and for the perpetrators to face justice.

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Ukraine: Graves from the time of the Holocaust are looted in search of gold teeth

Via CFCA:

Zhytomyr - the looting of Jewish mass graves from the days of the Holocaust have become a widespread epidemic in the country, this emerges from reports in Ukraine. The looters desecrate the graves looking in search of gold teeth, jewelry and skulls which are sold openly in urban markets. In recent years dozens of such cases have been reported in cities in the Zhytomyr Oblast (province) in the west of the country, but most looters are never brought before justice.

The president of the European forum for Russian speaker Jews, Mikhail Ihodnin, says that Ukraine has many mass graves where thousands of Jews were buried who had been killed during the Holocaust years. “We are making efforts to finance concrete and maintenance works to prevent looting and to erect monuments so people would understand the meaning of the place, but unfortunately we do not have enough resources” the president of the forum said.

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Lithuania Is Building a Convention Center Over Vilna’s Jewish Cemetery

Via Tablet:

For centuries, the city of Vilna (today Vilnius) was the center of Jewish life in what was then known as Polish-Lithuania. By the turn of the 20th century, the Lithuanian capital boasted over 100 synagogues, an array of Jewish newspapers, and scores of other cultural and religious institutions. It played host to the famed Gaon of Vilna, one of Judaism’s spiritual giants, and also to the socialist Bund, the secular Jewish labor movement.

Today, after the Holocaust, little is left of that historic Jewish community, which once comprised half of Vilna’s population, but now constitutes less than 1 percent of it. One remaining vestige of the city’s illustrious past, however, is its old Jewish cemetery, in which “a galaxy of eminent European rabbinic scholars and authors” were buried, as one leading scholar put it. Yet compounding tragedy upon tragedy, the Lithuanian government, reportedly with European Union funding, is preparing to build a $25 million convention center on the site.

In response, an alliance of local Jews and preeminent Jewish historians has taken up the cause of saving the cemetery. They are currently gathering signatures internationally for a petition to pressure the Lithuanian government. It can be signed here. “For us, it is [about] plain and simple human rights which include the right of the deceased to lie in peace, and the honoring of grave-plot purchases in perpetuity as sacrosanct,” said Dr. Dovid Katz, who taught Yiddish Studies at Oxford from 1978-1996, served as professor of Judaic studies at the University of Vilnius from 1999-2010, and now teaches at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. “Then there is the slight issue of discrimination and anti-Semitism,” he added. “This fate would not be proposed for a more than 500-year-old Lithuanian cemetery in the nation’s capital.”

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Ukraine: Anti-Semitic vandals hurl pig's head into tomb of Rebbe Nachman

Via Arutz 7:

Worshippers praying by the tomb of the founder of the Breslov Hasidic sect, Rebbe Nachman, say the rabbi’s resting place in the Ukrainian town of Uman was violated early Wednesday morning in a grotesque anti-Semitic attack.

Witnesses say a gang of Ukrainian vandals desecrated the tomb compound at approximately 2:00 a.m. local time, throwing a pig’s head and red paint into the building. Photograph close-ups of the pig’s head show a swastika was carved into the animal’s forehead. The attackers sprayed tear gas and shouted anti-Semitic epithets during the assault which left Jewish visitors to the tomb shaken.

“We were saved from murder only by the grace of heaven,” said of the witnesses.

“It was really frightening,” said a second witness, who works at the compound. “We’ve suffered from anti-Semitism here in the past, but this attack crossed a line and we’re all still in shock. We’ve started to clean the place, and the police have been called, but as far as I know, there haven’t been any arrests.”

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Germany: Jewish cemetery vandalized

Via Nord24:

The Jewish cemetery in Hagen, in western Germany, was vandalized in mid-November. Two tombstones were knocked over, and an attempt was made to remove the lettering from another. The damage is estimated at 800 euro. Police are investigating.

Austria: Vienna cemetery vandalized, news site bashed for using 'wrong image'

Via Die Presse (h/t Watch: Antisemitism in Europe):

The wall of the Jewish cemetery in Vienna was spray-painted with a swastika.   The Jewish Community Vienna (IKG) filed a complaint.

It's noteworthy that English-language site The Local didn't get around to publicizing the incident, but was very concerned abut the fact that a 'wrong' image was used by news site OE24.

"Even if the quotes and allegations in the article are true, it's highly misleading for the newspaper to publish pictures taken nearly ten years ago in a different country, and imply with the picture caption that it took place in Vienna."

Spain: Jewish cemetery vandalized

Via CFCA: The Jewish cemetery in Plasencia was vandalized.

Germany: Jewish cemetery in Strasburg vandalized

Via Neubrandenburg Police:

A tombstone was pushed down at the Jewish cemetery in Strasburg.

UK: Belfast rabbi says antisemitism growing in Northern Ireland

Via Jerusalem Post:

Antisemitism is on the rise in Northern Ireland as the Jewish community continues to suffer from repeated threats and acts of vandalism in Belfast, one local rabbi told the BBC Sunday.

Rabbi David Singer, head of the Belfast Jewish Community congregation, said that Jewish graves, synagogues and public spaces throughout Northern Ireland have been defaced with anti-Jewish graffiti over recent months.

“Yes, antisemitism is on the rise," Singer told BBC Radio Ulster's Sunday Sequence. "Let me tell you about four things - first of all...[the graffiti] in the process of being cleaned up right now. It is graffiti in town where what is written is the ‘F word’, a picture of a swastika and it says, ‘gas the kikes.’"

“On the synagogue walls," Singer continued, "there is graffiti. I am not going to read it out - it is really very unpleasant."

Singer also said he has received a number of "suspicious emails" over the same period of time.

“If we add these things together – the graffiti in town, the smashing of the gravestones, suspicious emails, and the graffiti on the synagogue wall – yes, I would say things are on the increase.”

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