Swastika graffiti painted on wall of Jewish cemetery near Auschwitz

Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — An unidentified individual scrawled a swastika and the Nazi SS symbol on a wall of a Jewish cemetery in the city of Oświęcim, Poland, near the site of the former Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum posted a picture of the graffiti on its Twitter account Sunday, noting it was near the former death camp that the Nazis built there in 1940, and where they murdered more than a million Jews.
The incident is “painful” and a reminder that “we need to keep fighting against all forms of hatred,” the museum wrote. The images were removed shortly after they were discovered.
The Nazis murdered three million non-Jews in Poland, in addition to three million Jewish Poles — half of all the Jews they had murdered throughout Europe.
Poland has seen a resurgence in right-wing nationalist sentiment in recent years. However, the glorification of Nazi ideology and symbols, which is common throughout much of Eastern Europe and beyond, is relatively rare in Poland.
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 gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
- 2
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 3
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 4
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Alfred Dreyfus was not the man you think he was — and the history of Jews in France is a little different too
-
Yiddish World This synagogue ‘gets’ why you need Yiddish on Yom Hashoah
-
Culture A subreddit notorious for Holocaust denial is back online — now as a memorial
-
Fast Forward As Supreme Court considers religious charter schools, Justice Kagan speculates about publicly funded yeshivas
-
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.