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Vandals damage 40 Jewish graves at cemetery in eastern Germany

AFP
AFP - news@thelocal.com
Vandals damage 40 Jewish graves at cemetery in eastern Germany
Pictured is the centre of Köthen, Saxony-Anhalt. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert

Vandals have desecrated a Jewish cemetery in eastern Germany, damaging more than 40 graves, police said on Wednesday.

The bulk of the damage in the town of Köthen in Saxony-Anhalt was caused by gravestones being pushed over, police in Dessau-Rosslau said.

The vandalism at the ancient burial site is estimated to be worth around €20,000, they said.

The crime is thought to have happened between September 15th and 19th.

Seven decades after the Holocaust, in which the Nazi regime slaughtered six million Jews, anti-Semitism remains a burning issue in Germany.

Anti-Semitic incidents declined in 2022 compared to the previous year but there was a rise in anti-Semitic violence, according to the Federal Association of Research and Information Centres on Anti-Semitism (RIAS).

READ ALSO: Holocaust survivor urges Germany to fight 'cancer' of hatred

A total of 2,480 anti-Semitic incidents were documented in 2022, including nine cases of extreme violence -- an all-time high since the survey began in 2017.

In October 2019, a gunman killed two people in the eastern city of Halle, having failed to storm a synagogue on Yom Kippur.

Before the attack, he had posted a racist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic manifesto online.

 

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