Anti-Semitic slogans, swastika painted on sign of British synagogue

(JTA) — Anti-Semitic graffiti was daubed on a sign of a synagogue in northern England and, in three separate incidents, outside schools in Rome and near Paris and on a Holocaust memorial monument in Germany.

Earlier this week visitors to the Etz Chaim synagogue in Leeds discovered a swastika and the word “kikes” spray-painted on a sign affixed to the synagogue’s perimeter fence, the Jewish News of London reported Wednesday.

The road in front of the entrance to the synagogue was defaced with the words “kikes get out,” in what local police are treating as an anti-Semitic hate crime. Fabian Hamilton, a lawmaker for the Labour party, told Jewish News: “As a Jew, the vandalism at the Etz Chaim synagogue in Alwoodley was particularly hurtful for me on a personal level, but to happen in my own constituency was even more of a disappointment.”

Earlier this month, a graffiti featuring a Star of David and the words “entrance for Jews” was spray-painted on an access road to the Seneca high school in Rome, located approximately a mile west of the Vatican, the Il Messaggero daily reported.

Separately, students and parents found a dozen-odd swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans, as well as lewd references to women, on a façade of a high school in Fontenay-Trésigny, a suburb situated 25 miles southeast of the French capital. The authors used a red marker in the act of vandalism, whose aftermath was discovered Monday, the Le Parisien weekly reported.

The incident in Germany was discovered last month in the city of Leipzig, located 80 miles southwest of Berlin. Unknown individuals etched using a blunt instrument at least two swastikas into the memorial for Jewish victims of the Holocaust near the city’s zoo. The symbols have been removed as police investigates the incident, Radio Leipzig reported.