A memorial to thousands of Jews who died during the Holocaust was desecrated in Thessaloniki, the second such incident in recent weeks, Greece’s top Jewish organization said.
A fresco commemorating the deportation of the Jews of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city, to the Nazi camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau was covered in swastikas and Nazi symbols, the report said.
“Anti-Semitic vandals roam freely and do not disrupt any attempt to preserve the memory of the Holocaust in Thessaloniki,” the Central Council of Jewish Communities of Greece (KIS) said in a statement.
Last month, a monument commemorating the Jewish cemetery in Thessaloniki, one of the oldest in Europe, was also sprayed with a swastika and a fascist symbol, which was destroyed in 1942 when Nazi Germany occupied Greece.
There were no arrests.
“Once again we call on the authorities to take all necessary measures to apprehend the perpetrators and bring them to justice,” the KIS said in a statement.
“Some condemnation statements are not enough! It is unacceptable that the perpetrators of vandalism of the memory remain at large,” the statement added.
Jewish memorials and cemeteries are often vandalized in Greece, where anti-Semitism is rampant.
The conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis includes three ministers who were previously high-ranking members of the Greek far-right party.
Now there are 6,000 Jews in Greece. An estimated 60,000 Greek Jews perished in the Holocaust – about 83% of the pre-war community.
