Vandals damage 40 Jewish graves at cemetery in eastern Germany
Vandals have desecrated a Jewish cemetery in eastern Germany, damaging more than 40 graves, police said on Wednesday.
The bulk of the damage in the town of Köthen in Saxony-Anhalt was caused by gravestones being pushed over, police in Dessau-Rosslau said.
The vandalism at the ancient burial site is estimated to be worth around €20,000, they said.
The crime is thought to have happened between September 15th and 19th.
Seven decades after the Holocaust, in which the Nazi regime slaughtered six million Jews, anti-Semitism remains a burning issue in Germany.
Anti-Semitic incidents declined in 2022 compared to the previous year but there was a rise in anti-Semitic violence, according to the Federal Association of Research and Information Centres on Anti-Semitism (RIAS).
READ ALSO: Holocaust survivor urges Germany to fight 'cancer' of hatred
A total of 2,480 anti-Semitic incidents were documented in 2022, including nine cases of extreme violence -- an all-time high since the survey began in 2017.
In October 2019, a gunman killed two people in the eastern city of Halle, having failed to storm a synagogue on Yom Kippur.
Before the attack, he had posted a racist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic manifesto online.
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The bulk of the damage in the town of Köthen in Saxony-Anhalt was caused by gravestones being pushed over, police in Dessau-Rosslau said.
The vandalism at the ancient burial site is estimated to be worth around €20,000, they said.
The crime is thought to have happened between September 15th and 19th.
Seven decades after the Holocaust, in which the Nazi regime slaughtered six million Jews, anti-Semitism remains a burning issue in Germany.
Anti-Semitic incidents declined in 2022 compared to the previous year but there was a rise in anti-Semitic violence, according to the Federal Association of Research and Information Centres on Anti-Semitism (RIAS).
READ ALSO: Holocaust survivor urges Germany to fight 'cancer' of hatred
A total of 2,480 anti-Semitic incidents were documented in 2022, including nine cases of extreme violence -- an all-time high since the survey began in 2017.
In October 2019, a gunman killed two people in the eastern city of Halle, having failed to storm a synagogue on Yom Kippur.
Before the attack, he had posted a racist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic manifesto online.
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