6 Jewish Gravestones Vandalized in Polish Cemetery

Image by Malgorzata Ploszaj/virtual sztetl

By JTA March 6, 2014

Vandals destroyed six tombstones in a Jewish cemetery in the Piasek district of Myslowice, a city in southern Poland.

The identity of the vandals, who knocked down the nineteenth-century gravestones on Monday night, remains unknown.

Last year, a group of local residents organized a cleaning of the cemetery, grubbing trees and bushes and cleaning the gravestones. During the work they exposed the gravestones of some of the city’s prominent historical figures, including author Jacob Lustig and Loebel Danziger, co-founder of the Myslowice coal mine.

“We will inform the police about the damage,” Ireneusz Skwirowski, one of the residents involved in cleaning the cemetery, told local news website itvm.pl. ”I was able to take pictures of the people suspected of creating this devastation.”

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