Headstones Smashed At Jewish Cemetery Near London
The British flag flies in London. Image by RistoArnaudov/iStock
(JTA) — Four headstones at a disused Jewish cemetery in the United Kingdom have been destroyed in what police are investigating as a possible anti-Semitic attack.
The perpetrators knocked down the headstones at the cemetery of the Chatham Memorial Synagogue in Rochester, a town located 30 miles east of London, sometime between Sept. 27 and Oct. 4, police told Kent Online, which published an article about the incident Tuesday.
“It’s difficult to describe the sense of horror at the disrespect and needless violence,” Dalia Halpern-Matthews, the chair of trustees of the nonprofit organization that runs the Chatham Memorial Synagogue, told the Daily Mail.
The unknown vandals destroyed the cemetery’s gate.
“The gate they ripped off was bolted to the wall. It was already open. It was damage for damage’s sake,” Halpern-Matthews said.
The last burial at the cemetery took place in 1982. Some graves there are more than 300 years old.
The Jewish community of Rochester has fewer than 50 members, according to the Daily Mail.
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!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
