Polish Synagogue Defaced With Swastikas on Kristallnacht Eve

By JTA November 4, 2013

Unidentified vandals painted several swastikas and other anti-Semitic symbols on a synagogue building in Gdansk, Poland.

Police are investigating the case and do not exclude the possibility that it may be the same vandals who three weeks ago set fire to a mosque in the city.

Swastikas were noted on the facade of the building at 10 a.m. on Monday. “Someone just came in broad daylight and defiled our temple,” Mieczyslaw Abramowicz a representative of the Gdansk Jewish Community, told TVN24 television. “It was done by anti-Semites or someone who does not know what that sign means and he did it out of sheer stupidity.”

Police initially classified the incident as the promotion of Nazi symbols which may result to two years in prison.

On October 16, unidentified individuals started a fire in a Gdansk mosque. It consumed the mosque’s door and some of the mosque’s equipment, resulting in damages of approximately $16,000.

“On the eve of the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, during which synagogues were burned in the Free City of Gdansk, the burning of the mosque must bear frightening connotations,” said representatives of the Jewish community of Gdansk in a statement released on Oct. 17.

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