Holocaust memorial vandalised in Greece

Thessaloniki (Greece), July 11

A Holocaust memorial was vandalised in Greece's second largest city Thessaloniki, officials said on Wednesday, the third anti-Semitic incident since May.

Blue paint was spattered on the memorial remembering thousands of Jews deported by the Nazis during World War II, and a symbol spelling out "Christ the Victor" left on one of the monument's plaques.

A police source said this symbol is popular with Greek and Serb Orthodox nationalist hardliners.

The incident was reported on Tuesday.

The monument was erected in 2014 on the grounds of Aristotle University to highlight that the university was built on the city's Jewish cemetery after it was razed by the Nazis—a fact largely forgotten by most Greeks today.

The cemetery had originally been created during the Roman era.

In June, unknown assailants had thrown red paint at Thessaloniki's main Holocaust memorial in the city centre, after a nationalist protest.

A month earlier, vandals had also smashed headstones in the Jewish section of a cemetery in Athens.

The attacks have been attributed to far-right supporters, including those from neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, which has been represented in Greece's parliament since 2012 and consistently rank as the third most popular movement in opinion polls.

After conquering Greece in 1941, Nazi Germany deported to extermination camps some 50,000 Jews from Thessaloniki, which at the time was one of the main centres of Judaism in the Balkans.

Anti-Semitism remains prevalent in Greece. Historically there is also strong support for the Palestinian cause.  — AFP