Israeli envoy to Poland deplores vandalism of Holocaust memorial
Ambassador condemns vandals who desecrated the Poland memorial with anti-Semitic slogans on Saturday.
By Reuters Tags: Jewish World Israel news anti-SemitismIsrael's ambassador to Poland on Sunday deplored the desecration of a Holocaust memorial in southern Poland and criticized world leaders who deny Israel's right to exist.
"This is a disgrace not only to all Jews but also to the Just Poles who risked their lives to save them," Zvi Rav-Ner told a gathering of some 1,000 Poles and Jews on the site of Nazi Germany's former forced-labor camp in Plaszow on the outskirts of Krakow.
On Saturday, vandals used red paint to deface the memorial with anti-Semitic slogans including "Jude Raus" (Jews Out) and "Hitler Good". A granite plaque in memory of the "tortured, murdered and incinerated" was daubed with a large swastika.
The ambassador was attending the 67th anniversary of the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto, when German soldiers marched its 6,000 inhabitants at gunpoint to Plaszow, a distance of some three kilometers (about two miles).
The Plaszow camp was the setting of U.S. film director Steven Spielberg's movie "Schindler's List" about a German industrialist who saved his Jewish workers from annihilation.
At Plaszow many of the sick, elderly and very young were killed while the remaining Jews were transported to Auschwitz some 50 km (30 miles) away.
"Unfortunately, there are also presidents of countries who claim that this (the Holocaust) did not occur, that there was no Auschwitz, that it's time to liquidate the Jewish state," the ambassador added.
He did not mention any country by name but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called the Holocaust a myth and questioned Israeli's right to exist.
Krakow's municipal anti-graffiti squad removed the anti-Semitic inscriptions in time for Sunday's ceremony.
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South Africa was a white state, a homeland for white people. Some people thought it had a right to exist; others felt it did not have a right to exist in its present form. It still exist, but in a more acceptable form.
What a disgrace. Whoever has done it and for whatever sick reason, there are many more in Krakow who remember and mourn the Jewish citizens of the city, who perished.
well potobac,israel IS a jewish state.A homeland for JEWISH people.Although some people in the world believe israel has the right to exist,apparently a large number of their neighbors don't think so.Would you want a bunch of neighbors who didn't like you tearing up your yard and tromping around your house any ol'time of the day and night?I don't think so,and i doubt the israeli's do either.
I don't think many question Israel's right to exist; the issue is it being a Jewish state. I'm sure if Israel were to take the step South Africa made and decree everyone equal in law and practice, with no ethnic superiority built into the system, much of the problem would stop. Why not give gentiles the same status in Israel Jews have in the uS?