(JTA) — An unidentified individual scrawled a swastika and the Nazi SS symbol on a wall of a Jewish cemetery in the city of Oświęcim, Poland, near the site of the former Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum posted a picture of the graffiti on its Twitter account Sunday, noting it was near the former death camp that the Nazis built there in 1940, and where they murdered more than a million Jews.
The incident is “painful” and a reminder that “we need to keep fighting against all forms of hatred,” the museum wrote. The images were removed shortly after they were discovered.
The Nazis murdered three million non-Jews in Poland, in addition to three million Jewish Poles — half of all the Jews they had murdered throughout Europe.
Poland has seen a resurgence in right-wing nationalist sentiment in recent years. However, the glorification of Nazi ideology and symbols, which is common throughout much of Eastern Europe and beyond, is relatively rare in Poland.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
