Antisemitic graffiti has been found on the walls of the house where Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel was born, Romanian police have confirmed.
Among the comments painted in pink on the property was the slogan that Mr Wiesel, who died in 2016, was "in hell with Hitler".
The graffiti was quickly removed and a police spokesperson confirmed that officers were now studying CCTV footage of the house in the northern Romanian town of Sight Marmatiei.
"This grotesque act represents an attack not only on the memory of Elie Wiesel but on all the victims of the Holocaust," said a statement by Romania's National Institute for Holocaust studies, which is named after the writer.
Mr Wiesel was born in the town in 1928 and later achieve worldwide acclaim after writing about his teenage years in Nazi concentration camps.
In 1944 his family was deported to Auschwitz, where his mother and one of his sisters were killed in the death camps. His father died at Buchenwald.
It was Mr Wiesel's use of the term Holocaust that helped cement the word's association with Nazi atrocities against the Jews.
In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for his role in speaking out against violence, repression and racism.
After his death, the head of the World Jewish Congress said he was "undoubtedly one of the great Jewish teachers and thinkers of the past 100 years".
