Jewish Cemetery in Germany desecrated, mirroring French vandalism
Both sites have been targeted before; French PM outraged, calls them an insult to the memory of the dead.
By JPOST.COM STAFF, JTASwastika's at Jewish cemetery (illustrative)(photo credit: REUTERS)
A Jewish cemetery in the northern German city of Oldenburg was desecrated over the weekend, the Oldenburger Online newspaper reported on Monday.Police are investigating the incident which left swastikas splattered on the cemetery's entrance, a wall as well as on two parked cars.This is not the first time the burial ground was targeted in such a fashion. Right-wing extremists have vandalized the site a number of times. In a prior case, one man was successfully charged in a court of law, sentenced to two years' probation for shooting paint-balls at a number of Jewish gravestones.In France, an unrelated attack on a Jewish cemetery also transpired over the weekend; vandals uprooted 300 gravestones in the Alsace region, near Germany.Like the Oldenburg cemetery, the French cemetery in Sarre-Union is no stranger to such attacks. In 1988, 60 Jewish headstones were overturned, and in 2001, 54 graves were vandalizedIn the most recent case, five French teens were detained on suspicion of having committed the desecration, which was discovered at around the same time as the vandalism in Germany.The suspected teens are all between the ages of 15 and 17 and were arrested after one turned himself in, claiming to a prosecutor that he had no anti-Semitic motives and that the outrage across the nation compelled him to do so.In response to the French case, the country's Prime Minister Manuel Valls took to Twitter, calling it “a vile, anti-Semitic act, an insult to the memory” of the dead.
