Last Thursday, unknown persons vandalized the monument on the Aristotle University campus in Thessaloniki, Greece, commemorating the Jewish cemetery that was destroyed by the Nazis in World War II.
The monument erected in 2014 was vandalized after unknown persons sprayed it with swastikas and graffiti with fascist inspiration and Nazi ideology.
The case occurs precisely at the end of 2022, a year in which no anti-Semitic incident or desecration of the Jewish space was recorded in Greece. Exactly three years ago (January 2019) the monument in Thessaloniki was also vandalized and blown up under similar circumstances.
We note that the serious incident is taking place at a time when there is close cooperation with the Greek government, the German government and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Municipality of Thessaloniki and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki to establish the Holocaust Museum of Greece.
The Jewish community in Thessaloniki strongly condemned the incident and stated that “this is an act that is a great insult to 50 thousand of the Jews of Thessaloniki who were massacred in the Nazi camps and to the sanctity of the site that commemorates the old Jewish cemetery that was destroyed by the Nazis and their collaborators in 1942 right on the university’s land.”
The community in Thessaloniki demanded that the university management strongly condemn the incident and stated that “precisely in the place where values and conscience are taught and where the leaders of the future grow, we expect to fight racism, anti-Semitism, intolerance and bigotry. We demand from the rector’s authorities of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki not only to condemn the incident and to restore the monument , but also for their full cooperation with the authorities to arrest the fascist criminals”, they concluded.
The mayor of Thessaloniki, Konstantinos Zervas, also strongly condemned the incident last night during the municipal council meeting “Thessaloniki respected and respects the history and the Jewish community and I demand the immediate arrest of the perpetrators and the immediate restoration of the monument”.
