Three different Holocaust memorials were reported as having been vandalized last week.
A tour guide in Belarus saw yellow paint covering a memorial commemorating the massacre of 5000 Jews from the Minsk Ghetto at the hands of the Nazis. The statue, which is part of a larger monument called ‘The Pit’, depicts a group of men, women and children on their descent into the ‘Pit’, the actual site at which the victims were massacred.
Similarly, in Thuringia, Germany, vandals painted the numbers ‘9201’ onto a memorial commemorating the Mittelbau Dora camp, a satellite of Buchenwald. Police do not yet understand the significance of the number, but are investigating.
In Brandenburg an information board at an outdoor installation in Jamlitz which commemorates the victims of the concentration camp that was located near the village was damaged by vandals using fireworks. Gunter Morsch, Director of the Foundation for Brandenburg Memorials stated that such incidents were common, noting that they “clearly have repeat offenders here”.
Finally, in Cologne a plaque commemorating the grandfather of Jewish writer and Cologne native Peter Finkelgruen-Martin was vandalized. Finkelgruen-Martin’s grandfather was murdered by the Nazis in Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942.