BICOM

Israelis reacted with shock and condemnation yesterday to the discovery of Hebrew graffiti thanking Hitler for the Holocaust and denouncing Zionism inside the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre in Jerusalem yesterday. Seven large slogans, including one which read: ” Hitler, thank you for the Holocaust” and “Jews, wake up, the evil regime does not protect us, it only endangers us.” were sprayed in Warsaw Ghetto Square near the sculpture memorialising the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. More graffiti was sprayed next to the cattle car memorial, which memorialises the deportation of millions of Jews from all over Europe to the Nazi death camps.
One of the slogans was signed, “World Haredi Jewry”, fuelling suspicion that a small fringe of ultra-Orthodox Jews virulently opposed to the state of Israel, were to blame.

Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch responded by saying, “We have to find these perpetrators as soon as possible. This was a heinous crime against one of the State of Israel’s most prominent symbols. I’m appalled and outraged.”

Matityahu Droblas, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, a former MK and currently a board member at Yad Vashem said. “The Warsaw Ghetto is a symbol of the Jewish people,” he said. “There are now 200,000 Holocaust survivors left in Israel. This [attack] was not just against survivors, it was against the entire Jewish people and the entire Jewish state.”