The monument was erected just four months ago in memory of the city’s fifty Jews who were deported to Auschwitz during the Holocaust, where they perished.
By ILANIT CHERNICKA man walks past a graffiti dedicated to the Holocaust in the northern port city of Thessaloniki(photo credit: ALEXANDROS AVRAMIDIS/REUTERS)
A Holocaust memorial in the central Greek city of Trikala was allegedly found to be vandalized a few days ago.The local Jewish community discovered the desecration and complained to the police, which launched an investigation to locate the perpetrators of the antisemitic act, Arutz 7 reported.The monument was erected just four months ago in memory of the city’s fifty Jews who were deported to Auschwitz during the Holocaust, where they perished.During the Holocaust, 450 Jews from Trikala managed to escape the city and fled to isolated villages in the mountains and Turkey, later on also getting to Israel.However, in 1944, the Nazis arrested 50 Jews from the Trikala community who had been in hiding, and deported them to the Auschwitz death camp.In October, the city's Jewish cemetery was also desecrated by vandals in an act of antisemitism. Eight tombs were destroyed, two of which belonged to the parents of the city’s Jewish community president.In more antisemitic incidents in Greece this year, a Jewish school in Athens was spray-painted with antisemitic slurs, while the monument commemorating the Jews of Thessaloniki, located at the University of Aristotle, was desecrated in January.The menorah and Star of David adorning the memorial were broken and left lying on the ground, while headstones inside the memorial were pushed over.Last year, there were 15 reported incidents of antisemitism across Greece.
