(JTA) — A Jewish cemetery in the German city of Hanover was desecrated with swastikas.
Police suspect the perpetrators are right-wing extremists and are seeking witnesses to the vandalism, which occurred between Nov. 3 and 5 at the An der Strangriede cemetery. Tombstones were defaced and the prayer house was damaged, according to German news reports.
Michael Fuerst, head of the Jewish community of Lower Saxony, told the TAZ newspaper that he does not see the Jewish communities as being particularly threatened, but that vigilance is necessary against anti-Semitism in Germany and other European countries.
The cemetery was dedicated in 1864 and has 3,500 gravestones. It was the second Jewish cemetery in Hanover, a city of 500,000 in northern Germany.
In September 1941 the Nazis assembled about 100 Jews in the prayer house before deporting them to the ghetto in Riga and to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
