Two swastikas and praise for Adolf Hitler were found carved into a concrete block at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Germany.
According to police, a security guard found the swastikas and the slogan “Heil Hitler” defacing the Holocaust memorial, which commemorates the lives of six million Jews.
Germany’s State Security Service is investigating the attack and hunting for the perpetrators, reported the German daily Bild.
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said it was “gut-wrenching” to see the memorial vandalised with Nazi hate symbols, saying: “It takes a certain type of twisted antisemitism to vandalise a memorial, in Berlin of all places, to the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
She hoped the perpetrator was “swiftly brought to justice for this heinous crime”.
German police are also reportedly investigating false information shared on the messaging app Telegram that claimed the memorial site at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp, located outside Berlin, was going to be used to house Ukrainian refugees escaping the war with Russia.
Horst Seferens, a spokesperson for the memorial at the site of the former Nazi camp, denied the rumours, labelling them part of what he believes to be a “digital disinformation campaign, the origin of which is usually in Russia”.
Separately on Tuesday, seven trees dedicated to the victims of the Nazi Buchenwald concentration camp were chopped down.
The trees were planted along a route outside the camp along which prisoners of the Nazis were taken.
One of the trees attacked was dedicated to the children murdered at the camp. The other six trees were planted by the wives, children, and grandchildren of victims of the Nazi genocide.
