ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — The Athens Holocaust Memorial was desecrated for the second time in five months.
On Thursday, the logo of the ultranationalist group known as the Unaligned Meander Nationalists was spray-painted in blue on the memorial.
In June, threats against the Jewish community were spray-painted on the monument, which was erected in 2010 and commemorates the more than 60,000 Greek Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. Today only about 5,000 Jews live in Greece.
“We call upon the municipal and state authorities to effectively protect the Holocaust Monument of the capital, in order to avoid repetition of such phenomena,” said a joint statement from the Jewish Community of Athens and the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece.
The community also called on Greek authorities to “put into motion all necessary procedures so that the perpetrators – those whose hateful and violent actions offend the dignity and the cultural heritage of the city – be apprehended and punished.”
The same group, which describes the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party as “moderates,” vandalized the Holocaust monument on the island of Rhodes in October 2012.
A recent Anti-Defamation League survey showed that Greece has Europe’s highest rate of anti-Semitic attitudes, with 69 percent of Greeks espousing anti-Semitic views. That is nearly twice the rate as the next highest country, France, with 37 percent.
