A Jewish cemetery has been desecrated in a southern Czech town, police said Friday.

Spokeswoman Hana Moltasova said in a statement that 23 tombstones were overturned and five tombstones broken at the cemetery in Pisek, 100 kilometers south of Prague.

The cemetery, dating back to the 19th century, is no longer used for burials, and was opened to the public in 1993 after renovations.

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Two weeks ago, vandals defiled a Holocaust memorial at a Berlin train station, where tens of thousands of Jews were once shipped to Nazi concentration camps.

Several candles near the train tracks at Grunewald station were knocked over, and an Israeli flag was burned, Berlin police said in a statement. Such acts are considered crimes in Germany.

The Grunewald memorial is called "Platform 17," commemorating the more than 50,000 Jews transported from the station to concentration camps.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited the Grunewald site last year.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to combat right-wing extremism, but critics say the 19 million euros a year spent on campaigns to draw young people away from radical ideologies is inadequate.

Speaking later at a school of Jewish studies in the southwestern city of Heidelberg, Merkel called for greater religious and social tolerance in European nations, and a firm rejection of fundamentalism.

"Take the example of the threat from Iran, whose president wants to eliminate the state of Israel and denies the Holocaust," she told the audience. Merkel said the international community had to respond to this threat with resoluteness and solidarity.

A wrong notion of tolerance was not useful in practical politics.

She told 500 students and professors that the German state would stand up to fundamentalists and other enemies of liberty.

Jewish, Christian and Muslim students attend the school in Heidelberg to learn the basics about Jewish history and faith.