At least a dozen headstones were desecrated at a Jewish cemetery in Argentina.

The headstones were upended and damaged at the cemetery in Santiago del Estero, a city of nearly 250,000 located about 620 miles northeast of Buenos Aires. The attack, which is believed to have occurred over the weekend, was discovered on Monday by a cemetery worker.

“Photos were scattered and monuments were damaged in an unprecedented level of violence in our Jewish cemetery,” Hernan Kriscautzky, the Santiago del Estero representative to the Argentine Jewish political umbrella DAIA, told JTA.

Photos of the dead are placed on tombs to help visitors identify the gravesites.

There was no anti-Semitic graffiti or other messages found at the cemetery, which is still active.

Police are investigating the incident.

The neighborhood cemetery next to the Jewish cemetery was not vandalized, though it has been robbed of metals previously, the local newspaper El Liberal reported.

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! 

Don't just read the Forward - invest in it. Make a gift and our board will match it.

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$129 $180 $360 OTHER AMOUNT