Anti-Semitic Messages Painted On Romanian Synagogue

Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — Anti-Semitic messages were found painted on the wall of a synagogue in Romania.
“Holocaust Never Happened” and “All the Best” with a Star of David were painted in black and red on the outside of the Synagogue of Deportees Memorial Temple in Cluj-Napoca, in northwestern Romania.
Police were called about the graffiti on Monday by representatives of the city’s Jewish community, though the vandalism may have taken place over the weekend, according to local reports.
Though the synagogue is located on a main thoroughfare in the city, no witnesses have come forward with information about the vandalism.
Built in 1886, the synagogue was destroyed during Allied bombardments in June 1944. It was rebuilt and reinaugurated in 1947, when it was dedicated to the memory of the over 16,000 Jews deported from Cluj in May-June 1944 and exterminated in Auschwitz.
The area’s Jewish community of about 400 uses the synagogue.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
