The Alyosha monument in Bulgaria’s second city of Plovdiv has been daubed with numerous antisemitic, anti-Russian and anti-communist messages.
The spraying on the monument, found on the morning of November 10, comes amid celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Alyosha monument, which was put up to commemorate the September 1944 Soviet invasion of Bulgaria towards the close of the Second World War in Europe.
It also comes a day after Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova again criticised Bulgaria for lack of action against daubing of Soviet war monuments, a week after she unleashed controversy by claiming that it was the Red Army that had prevented Bulgarian Jews being sent to the Holocaust death camps where six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
November 10 is also the anniversary of the 1989 fall of the Zhivkov communist regime in Bulgaria, a date that – as per a heated debate in the National Assembly – is one that sees the ideological divisions in the country between left and right once again laid bare.
The attack on the monument also comes after the anniversary of the November 9, 1938 Kristallnacht Nazi attacks against Jews in Germany.
The Alyosha monument was daubed with swastikas, with the words “six million lies”, “Zakharova is a transvestite”, “communism = Jewishness”, and using an offensive word in Bulgarian for Jews, a message reading in translation: “kill the kikes”. The monument was painted with the number 88, neo-Nazi code for Hitler.
Reacting to the attack on Alyosha, the Shalom Organisation of the Jews in Bulgaria, the country’s EJC affiliate, said that it was the second time in a month that a monument in Bulgaria was marked with swastikas, antisemitic slogans and offensive political messages.
Shalom was referring to the recent daubing of the Soviet Army monument in Sofia with the words “100 years Zionist occupation”.
Shalom said that it categorically condemns these incidents and believes that the municipality of Plovdiv will take all necessary measures for the security and protection of the monument.
“We are convinced that there is no room for such provocations in Bulgarian society and we hope for an adequate and sharp reaction against them,” Shalom said.
