Stumbling Stone Holocaust Memorial Stolen In Northwest Italy
A stumbling stone, or Stolperstein. Image by Getty Images
ROME (JTA) – Italian police are investigating the theft of a “stumbling stone” Holocaust memorial to an Auschwitz victim.
The memorial, a gold-colored cobblestone-sized monument embedded in sidewalk, was stolen last week just a month after it was placed in Collegno, a suburb of Turin in northwest Italy.
Collegno Mayor Francesco Casciano called the theft a “deplorable act that goes beyond vandalism” as it took place at “a time when a resurgence of neofascism” threatens democratic society.
The stumbling stone commemorated Massimo De Benedetti, who was deported from Collegno and killed in Auschwitz in October 1944.
The theft was the latest in a spate of vandal attacks on stumbling stone memorials in Italy in recent weeks. These included the theft of one in Venice and defacement of one in Milan.
The incidents have taken place in the run-up to general elections scheduled for March 4, in which the populist Five Star Movement and virulently anti-immigrant, far-right League Party are expected to make strong showings.
On Feb. 3, a far-right activist and League supporter wounded six African migrants in a drive-by shooting in the central Italian town of Macerata. On Tuesday, Italy’s Jewish leadership issued formal backing for a national anti-fascist demonstration scheduled to take place in Rome on Saturday but said it would not officially take part because of Shabbat.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Chicago man charged with hate crime for attack of two Jewish DePaul students
-
Fast Forward In the ashes of the governor’s mansion, clues to a mystery about Josh Shapiro’s Passover Seder
-
Fast Forward Itamar Ben-Gvir is coming to America, with stops at Yale and in New York City already set
-
Fast Forward Texas Jews split as lawmakers sign off on $1B private school voucher program
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street. Is this what communal life has come to?
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Yes, the attack on Gov. Shapiro was antisemitic. Here’s what the left should learn from it
-
News ‘Whose seat is now empty’: Remembering Hersh Goldberg-Polin at his family’s Passover retreat
-
Fast Forward Chicago man charged with hate crime for attack of two Jewish DePaul students
-
Fast Forward In the ashes of the governor’s mansion, clues to a mystery about Josh Shapiro’s Passover Seder
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.