(JTA) — Swastikas were painted on a monument for Holocaust victims in Russia, and another one was smashed in Romania.
Police arrested a 30-year-old man for painting a cross and pouring yellow paint on a monument for Holocaust victims in Aksay, a village outside the city of Rostov-on-Don near the border with Ukraine. The man had a dispute with an employer and vented his frustration by destroying the monument, the news site Volga Kaspiy reported Friday. The report did not say whether the employer was Jewish.
In Romania, unidentified individuals shattered the marble panels of a monument for about 7,500 Jews who were sent to be murdered from Târgu Mureş in the country’s north, Zoltán Soós, a local politician wrote.
In 2012, the Council of Europe adopted a nonbinding resolution that places the responsibility of caring for Jewish cemeteries on national governments. The resolution was based in part on a report that said Jewish cemeteries are “probably” more vulnerable than other cemeteries.
In addition to frequent vandalism, including for anti-Semitic reasons, at Jewish cemeteries, the report also noted instances of cemeteries in Eastern Europe that have been turned into “residential areas, public gardens, leisure parks, army grounds and storage sites; some have been turned into lakes.”
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