France: 'Vandalized' synagogue memorial - an accident

Via Israel National News:

Damage to a memorial marking the site of Strasbourg's Old Synagogue, destroyed by the Nazis during World War II, was caused accidentally by a motorist and was not an act of anti-Semitism, a French police source has said.

The incident last weekend sparked outrage, with Strasbourg deputy mayor Alain Fontanel describing it as an "act of vandalism" and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu condemning "another shocking anti-Semitic incident".

A police probe using surveillance cameras revealed that a 31-year-old man reversed into the memorial after leaving a nearby nightclub with friends, the source told AFP on Thursday.

"At this stage, no anti-Semitic nature has been detected," the source said, adding the driver has been summoned to court in June over hit and run charges. 

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France: Synagogue memorial stone vandalised in antisemitic attack (update: it was a car accident)

Update: turns out this was an accident

Via Independent:

A memorial stone marking the site of a former synagogue destroyed by the Nazis has been vandalised in Strasbourg.

Officials said the heavy memorial stone was discovered moved from its base in the French city on Saturday morning.

Strasbourg mayor Roland Ries denounced the incident as “a new antisemitic act”.

French officials in the region said that antisemitism “undermines the values of the republic”.

The monument commemorates a synagogue built in 1898 that was set on fire and razed to the ground by the Nazis in 1940.

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France: Outrage as swastikas, 'Jews' scrawled on Jewish symbols

Via France24:

A tree planted in a Paris suburb in memory of a young Jewish man who was tortured to death in 2006 has been chopped down, authorities said Monday, confirming the latest in a series of anti-Semitic acts in France.

Ilan Halimi was kidnapped by a gang that demanded huge sums of money from his family, believing them to be rich because he was Jewish.

After being tortured for three weeks, the 23-year-old cellphone salesman was found dumped next to a railway in the southern suburb of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. He died while being brought to hospital.

On Monday, municipal workers sent to prepare a memorial site for a annual remembrance ceremony this week discovered that a tree planted in his honour had been chopped down and a second one partly sawn through, local officials told AFP.

The police are investigating the incident, which the French government's special representative on racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination, Frederic Potier, described as "ignominious".

It is the latest in a series of anti-Semitic acts and attacks that have raised fears of a new wave of anti-Jewish violence in a country that is home to Europe's biggest Jewish population.

In two separate incidents in the past two days, swastikas were drawn on Paris postboxes containing portraits of late Holocaust survivor Simone Veil and the word Juden (German for Jews) was sprayed on the window of a bagel bakery in the capital.

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Greece: Jewish cemetery memorial in Thessaloniki targeted, again

Via ekathimerini:

A monument on the campus of Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University (AUT) which commemorates a Jewish cemetery destroyed by the Nazis was targeted again by vandals on Friday.

The perpetrators smashed the marble commemorative signs placed in the old cemetary which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1942.

This is the third time the monument has been targeted. In July 2018, vandals twice daubed paint and painted a cross on the monument.

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Greece: Holocaust Memorial in Thessaloniki sprayed with Swastika

Via Ekathimerini:

Unknown assailants spray-painted a black Swastika on the Holocaust Memorial on the northern port city of Thessaloniki's Eleftherias Square late on Friday or in the early hours of Saturday.

The assailants are believed to have been part of a rally held earlier on Friday by protesters opposed to the name deal Greece signed over the summer with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Local website Voria published photographs of demonstrators in that rally giving the Nazi salute.

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Italy: Outrage after plaques honoring Rome's deported Jews stolen

Via Ynet News:

Rome’s mayor, Catholic groups and politicians of every stripe joined Italy’s Jewish community this week in denouncing the theft of 20 small bronze plaques honoring a Jewish family deported during the Holocaust.

The plaques, affixed to the cobblestones in front of the Di Consiglio family home in the Monti neighborhood of downtown Rome, were taken overnight. A gaping hole in the cobblestones was all that remained Monday.

The organization responsible for laying the plaques, “Art in Memory,” reported the theft. In July, the same group reported receiving a threatening letter featuring a photo of Adolf Hitler.

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Belgium: Vandals damage Holocaust memorial in Ghent

Via JNS:

Vandals damage a Holocaust memorial in the Belgian city of Ghent on the eve of a Kristallnacht commemoration. 

Vandals damaged a Holocaust memorial in the Belgian city of Ghent, some 50 kilometers west of Brussels, on the eve of a Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”) commemoration.

The so-called Michaël Lustig monument, in the shape of a dreidel, is located at the confluence of a major canal. It was ripped off its foundation and left on its side.

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Estonia: Holocaust victim memorials vandalised at Kalevi-Liiva

Via err.ee:

Sometime Saturday overnight or on Sunday, just days ahead of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, unidentified individuals vandalised multiple Holocaust memorials at Kalevi-Liiva, Harju County, the execution site of thousands of victims of Nazism.

The memorials were tagged with a swastika, penises and antisemitic and Nazi messages as well as burned, likely using a blowtorch.

The vandalism was discovered by local residents, who notified the police, the municipal government and Estonia's Jewish community about it.

Jewish Community of Estonia chairwoman Alla Jakobson said that she was shaken and outraged by the news.

"I can't call these Nazi-sympathisers who attack the memory of innocent victims with such brutality and anger human," she said. "The memory of the dead has always been regarded with such great respect and honour in Estonia, regardless of ethnicity. An Estonian resident cannot act like this, which is why I am sure that the memorial was vandalised by people who hate Estonia, and this should also be seen as a provocation timed to coincide with the Day of Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Estonia."

Jakobson also thanked those who alerted the authorities and the Jewish community to the incident.

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Anti-Semitic vandals hit shop in Italy, Holocaust monuments in France, Holland

Via Times of Israel:

A barbershop in Italy, and Holocaust monuments in the Netherlands and France were targeted in separate incidents deemed anti-Semitic.

The perpetrators of the incident involving Gianni Errichiello’s barbershop in a northern suburb of Turin in northern Italy torched a car parked in front of the establishment on Marconi Square. They splashed red paint on the shuttered blinds of the barbershop of Errichiello, who is not Jewish. And they attached a piece of printer paper on which was printed: “This shop belongs to a Jew,” Corriere de la Sera reported Tuesday.

(...)

Separately, in Paris, unidentified individuals removed a commemorative plaque that education ministry officials put up at the Ave Maria public elementary school for Jewish children who were deported from there and murdered during the Holocaust, Le Parisien last week reported.

The perpetrators did not damage any other object on the building’s façade, raising the suspicion that their action was an anti-Semitic incident. The Ave Maria school is located at the 4th District of Paris, or the Marais – the city’s historic Jewish quarter. The district’s mayor, Ariel Weil, who is Jewish, called the incident “shameful.”

On Sunday, unidentified individuals painted swastikas and other far-right symbols on a monument for Holocaust victims in the Midden-Groningen municipality, situated in the northeastern Netherlands, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the capital Amsterdam. City workers swiftly cleaned the black paint off the monument as police began investigating the incident, the RTV Noord broadcaster reported.

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Austria: Holocaust memorial in Vienna defaced

Via reader:

There is a small memorial exhibit at the subway station Herminengasse in Vienna, for the Jews rounded up and sent to death and concentration camps during the Holocaust. Although this exhibit only opened in October 2017, it already has been defaced twice, this time with "gaza" spray-painted in blue. Workers tried to wash it off but it is still quite visible.

Photos of the recent defacement (the squiggly black lines are part of the original exhibit):

Poland's Auschwitz Museum Staff Suffer Anti-Semitic Attacks After Holocaust Speech Law

Via Telesur:

In April, the brother of the museum’s director wrote a heartfelt message on Facebook decrying the “50 days of incessant hatred” directed at his brother, Piotr Cywiński.

"For 12 long years he’s worked in one of the most terrible places in the world, in an office with a view of gallows and a crematorium," Cywiński wrote. "Dozens of articles on dodgy websites, hundreds of Twitter accounts, thousands of similar tweets, profanities, memes, threats, slanders, denunciations. It’s enough to make you sick."

Paweł Sawicki, who runs the museum’s social media operation, told the Guardian, "The collateral damage of the dispute is that Auschwitz became a target. We’ve had people saying they were not allowed to have a Polish flag here, or saying that the memory of Poles is not represented here, that the museum is anti-Polish – all of this is untrue, and we had to respond."

The museum, however, continues with a stiff stance, as it continues to regularly interject in Twitter discussions and by publishing a long list of false claims that have been made about the museum, ranging from the issue of Polish flags to the accusation that former Polish prisoners being not invited to a ceremony in January to commemorate the camp’s liberation.

The hate campaign initiated by the Polish nationalists has raised concerns over the pressure exerted on the official guides at the site in southern Poland. 

The Guardian reported that at least two tourist guides suffered abuse,  in one episode a foreign guide was attacked while in another the supporters of a convicted antisemite filmed themselves repeatedly bullying their guide during a visit to the camp in April.

In February, the official responsible for schools in the region in which Auschwitz is located argued that only Poles should be allowed to work as guides at the site. And they should be licensed by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, a state body widely seen as a tool used by the government to impose its preferred historical narratives.

"Foreign, and not Polish narratives reign at Auschwitz. Time for it to stop," wrote Barbara Nowak, who until last year served as a local councilor for Law and Justice. 

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Netherlands: Cop requests removal of Holocaust memorial sign, cites Israeli actions / Jew attacked

Via Times of Israel:

A bookshop owner in the Dutch capital said that a police officer asked him to remove a sign commemorating Holocaust victims, citing Israel’s actions.

Gert-Jan Jimmink told the De Telegraaf daily in a video published online Friday that the request was over a sign that read “Open Jewish Homes, Houses of Resistance.” The sign is part of a grassroots initiative from 2011 in the Netherlands in which residents of homes that used to belong to Holocaust victims open them to the public on the week of May 4, the Netherlands’ day of Remembrance of the Dead for Dutch war casualties.

The officer asked Jimmink: “Would you mind taking that off, because Israel launched an attack,” he said. Jimmink did not say when the officer, who he did not name, requested this. He ignored the request, he said. “I will not bow to this,” he added.

Jimmink, who has commemorated Holocaust victims also by having memorial cobblestones installed outside their former homes, also said that he recently saw an anti-Semitic assault outside his shop. A man of about 40 wearing a kippah was waiting for a tram, when an older man spat on him and hit him, Jimmink said. The attacker had left by the time Jimmink rushed to intervene he said.

“But it happened right in front of my eyes,” he said.

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Poles who saved Jews in the Holocaust appeal to leaders for Polish-Israeli reconciliation

Please read the English version of the Appeal @ the Jan Karski Educational Foundation

Via The Jewish Chronicle:

Fifty surviving Poles who helped to save the lives of Jews during the Holocaust have commissioned a full-page advert in a national newspaper calling for a thawing of relations with Israel. Poland came under international scrutiny last month when it approved a law that would see jail sentences for those found guilty of suggesting the “Polish nation” was complicit in the Holocaust.

The move attracted criticism, particularly from the Israeli government.

“One cannot change history and the Holocaust cannot be denied,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the time. The advert, on page 27 of Thursday’s Guardian, called on Israeli and Polish leaders to “continue to build an alliance and a future in Poland, Israel, Europe, and America, based on friendship, solidarity and truth”.

It was taken out by the surviving Polish Righteous Among the Nations, a title given by Yad Vashem on those who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

More Poles – 6,850 in total, of whom 50 are living today – have been granted the honour, more than any other nationality. The letter read:

“We, the remaining living Righteous, representing the 6,850 Polish Righteous Among the Nations appeal to the governments and parliaments of Israel and Poland to return to the path of dialogue and reconciliation. “We ask you not to re-write history. The worst tragedy in the history of our nations was written once and for all during the darkest hour of the Nazi German occupation, of which we are all still victims to this day.

“We do not consent to the escalation of the conflict between Jews and Poles that we are witnessing today.  

“We, the Polish Righteous, who carry the burden of eye-witnessing the truth about the Holocaust along with the Jews, its victims, ask everybody for empathy, judiciousness, and thoughtfulness when creating laws; for responsible media coverage; and for honest and independent historical research.

“Only then can the issues that need to be explained, be explained. We ask for dialogue and kindness.”

It was addressed to Mr Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki, as well as the speakers of the Israeli Knesset and Polish parliament.

Poland: "The Polish underground state and the London exile government never collaborated with the Nazis"

Via Der Spiegel - Interview with new Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki:

DER SPIEGEL: Your government introduced a law that makes it a crime to use the term "Polish concentration camp" or statements that attribute any complicity by the Polish nation or government in the Nazi crimes. Is the penal code really the right way to fight historical misrepresentation and cluelessness?

Morawiecki: Yes. Germany and Israel also do this. You can be punished there for denying the Holocaust or incitement. Last year alone, Polish embassies intervened 250 times around the world because someone used the formulation "Polish death camp." Our Supreme Court is currently giving the law another review to determine if it contains any misleading wording.

DER SPIEGEL: But the plan has been strongly criticized by the Israeli side.

Morawiecki: We are explaining our position and I believe that the Israeli side is growing more understanding toward us. We are noticing that in diplomatic discussions and we are seeing increasingly friendly editorials in the press. Yes, we did have thousands of "Szmalcownicy," Poles who murdered Jews or betrayed them to the Nazis. At the same time, however, even in occupied Warsaw, hell on earth, 90,000 Catholic Poles helped their Jewish neighbors. The Polish underground state and the London exile government never collaborated with the Nazis. We support precise research into our history.

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Slovakia: Synagogue turned into trendy café

On the same topic:
Swimming Pool, Furniture Shop and Police Station: The Sorry Fate of Europe's Old Synagogues

Via YNet:

Eighty-two percent of the Jews residing in Trnava, Slovakia, were murdered in the Holocaust, destroyed along with an ancient Jewish heritage dating back to the 12th century. The city's synagogues were similarly demolished—or were converted for other uses. Israeli traveler Meir Davidson found one such synagogue, converted to a café.

During his travels in Trnava—nicknamed "Slovakia's Rome" due to its proliferation of churches—Davidson found a crowded coffee shop attempting to blend into the architectural space which it occupied without totally eradicating it.

"The main street had a model of the city containing two synagogues near the local basilica," Davidson told Ynet. "We looked for them and were shocked to find an active café, filled with local yuppies."

The coffee shop's management, he added, made no effort to disguise the structure's previous designation as a house of worship and even stated it explicitly—as the café was named Synagóga Café and the "synagogue's history was printed on the menu." 

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Lithuania, Poland, and Eastern Europe’s confrontation with the Holocaust

Via Mosaic Magazine:

In the late 1990s, and again a decade later, attempts to prosecute a few Lithuanian citizens for their involvement in the slaughter of Jews during World War II were countered by efforts to prosecute a Nazi hunter and then two Holocaust survivors for committing “crimes” against Lithuanians. At the time, the historian Antony Polonsky wrote an essay on these and related controversies in Lithuania, comparing them with similar controversies in Poland and Germany; the essay was published in Poland in 2010 but has now been made available online for the first time in the wake of the recent Polish law forbidding false statements about the Polish role in the Holocaust:

Lithuanian and Jewish collective memories [are still] very far apart. The Lithuanians, who lost their independence after World War II, felt that the Jews had shown little appreciation for the favorable way they had been treated in interwar Lithuania [which, on the whole, was marginally better than what Jews experienced in neighboring countries, or had experienced under the Tsars] and held the Jews collectively responsible for aiding the first [1940-41] and second [1944-1991] Soviet occupations of their country. Only a small number of Lithuanians had participated in the mass murder of the Jews, comparable to the minority of alleged Jewish collaborators with the Soviets.

Jews for their part highlighted the growth of anti-Semitism [in Lithuania] in the 1930s. They were particularly affronted by what they saw as the massive involvement of Lithuanians in the mass murder of the Jews, both just before the establishment of Nazi rule and particularly in cooperation with the Nazi occupiers, and were shocked by the brutal behavior of Lithuanians in such incidents as the massacre at the Lietukis garage in Kaunas on June 27, 1941.

Given the large-scale complicity of Lithuanians in the mass murder of Jews in 1941, the traumatic effect of the two Soviet occupations of Lithuania, the second lasting nearly a half-century, and the unstable nature of the Lithuanian political scene, with the temptation this offers to demagogic politicians to engage in populist rhetoric, it is not surprising that the discussion of wartime issues has proved a difficult and painful topic and has led to bitter exchanges between Jews and Lithuanians. . . .

From the first days of independence, a series of public statements by Lithuanian leaders expressed regret at the participation of Lithuanians in the Holocaust and condemned the genocide. The culminating point was the visit of then-President Brazauskas to Israel during which, in his address to the Knesset in March 1995, he publicly asked forgiveness “for [the actions of] those Lithuanians who mercilessly murdered, shot, deported, and robbed Jews.” This was not universally well-received in Lithuania and led to calls for the Jews in response to apologize for their “crimes” against the Lithuanian nation during the Soviet occupation.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Polish public figures have begun making similar appeals for Jewish apologies in recent days.

Read more at Tablet

Greece: Holocaust memorial in Thessaloniki desecrated with “Golden Dawn” graffiti

Via Against Antisemitism (h/t glykosymoritis)

Only days after the desecration with “Free Palestine” graffiti, the Thessaloniki Holocaust memorial was vandalized by Greek nazis with “Golden Dawn” graffiti (see photo of the new vandalism below).

Tens of thousands of Greeks protested today in Thessaloniki the use of the name “Macedonia” in a solution to a dispute between Greece and Republic of Macedonia.

...

Earlier today, Greek news outlet thestival.gr detected antisemitic leaflets at the White Tower square targeting the Mayor of Thessaloniki, Yiannis Boutaris, and calling him “a slave of the Jews”.

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Greece: Holocaust memorial in Thessaloniki desecrated with "Free Palestine" graffiti

Via Avi Mayer@Twitter

Greece: Holocaust monument in Larissa vandalized by alleged clergyman

VIA KIS (h/t Against Antisemitism):

In the evening of Monday July 17, 2017, an individual dressed as a monk who calls himself ‘father Kleomenis’ -a cult figure, popular for his bigot ideas and You tube posts- attacked and vandalized the Holocaust Monument in Larissa, situated in the central Jewish Martyrs Square of the city. In his video posted on You Tube, the alleged monk curses the Jews, denies the Holocaust and calls on the local patriots of Larissa to intervene and demolish the Monument. "Father" Kleomenis spits, kicks and throws eggs at the Monument. Some of his characteristic quotes: “Here, we read 6 million! Fairy tails… Shit on their faces, merely 600.000 Hitler wiped out!”. Kleomenis spits the Monument and says: “Satanic Jews”. He kicks the Monument and says: “Curse on your dirty Monuments” and continues: “Worms, Jewish bitches, this has to fall. The stinking Jewishness has to be taken down from Larissa. Rise up! Patriotic organizations of Larissa take it down, bring the bulldozer on!”.  Local police was notified and legal procedure was enacted. Investigation is ongoing. 

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Ukraine: Holocaust monument desecrated in Ternopil

Via CFCA:

Petrikov - On the outskirts of the village Petrikov near Ternopil, unknown has committed an act of vandalism on the grave of the victims of the Holocaust.

The monument and the wreaths he poured an oily liquid. Also on a place there is a broken vessel, which probably was an unknown substance.

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