(JTA) — A memorial to teen Holocaust diarist Anne Frank in Boise, Idaho, was vandalized with anti-Semitic and racial slurs.
The damage at the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, located in a nearly one-acre memorial park maintained by the Boise Parks and Recreation Department in partnership with the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, will cost about $20,000 to repair, according to the Idaho Statesman.
The vandalism was discovered by a group touring the site on Tuesday afternoon, the newspaper reported.
The anti-Semitic graffiti, which the paper did not publish, was written in permanent ink on a marble tablet that contains a list of the names of the donors to the memorial. A racial slur and a message declaring that black people are not human was written directly below the engraved first paragraph of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Built by the Idaho Human Rights Education Center, the privately funded memorial opened in August 2002 as a gift to the city. It is the first incident of vandalism; there are no security cameras at the memorial, according to the newspaper.
The chemicals used on Tuesday to remove the ink ruined the marble tablets, which will have to be replaced, according to Dan Prinzing, executive director of the Wassmuth Center, formerly the Idaho Human Rights Education Center.
