Headstones smashed at Jewish cemeteries in Ukraine and Romania
(JTA) — In two separate incidents, a Jewish cemetery was vandalized in Romania and Ukraine.
The Center for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism in Romania-MCA reported Sunday about the incident in the town of Ploesti, located about 50 miles north of Bucharest. Multiple headstones, some as recent as 2009, were knocked over. Several were smashed.
On Thursday, at least 10 of the 60 headstones in the Jewish cemetery of Radvanka, a western Ukraine village on the outskirts of Uzhgorod, according to the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, one of several communal interests group. Also, the group said Friday, in an unfenced hillside graveyard with overgrown grass, several of the headstones were smashed.
In both incidents, police were informed of the damage. There are no suspects in either case.
In 2012, the Council of Europe, a intergovernmental body that is not part of the European Union, adopted a nonbinding resolution placing responsibility for the care of Jewish cemeteries on national governments. The resolution was based in part on a report that said Jewish cemeteries are “probably” more vulnerable than other cemeteries.
In addition to frequent vandalism, including for anti-Semitic reasons, at Jewish cemeteries, the report also noted instances of cemeteries in Eastern Europe that have been turned into “residential areas, public gardens, leisure parks, army grounds and storage sites; some have been turned into lakes.”
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
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
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward An Israeli think tank used AI to analyze 4,400 American synagogue sermons. Here’s what it found.
-
Film & TV Our preeminent historian of the Jews is finally ready to confront Auschwitz
-
News Trump would eliminate antisemitism envoy in proposed State Department overhaul
-
Yiddish World Philanthropist Elie Hirschfeld gifts domains Yiddish.com and Yiddish.org to the Forward
-
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.