Vandals stripped away inscriptions on the Holocaust memorial in Athens written by Elie Wiesel.
The attack on the memorial, commemorating more than 60,000 Greek Jews killed during the Second World War, took place on Saturday.
Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who would go on to become a renowned author and Nobel Prize winner, wrote the inscription especially for the engraved plaque. It was written in Greek, French and English, but only the English inscription remains.
“Elie Wiesel’s appeal to the passer-by to stand, to remember, to honour the victims of the Holocaust was turned into an act of vandalism, disrespect, insult,” said Minor Moisis, president of the Jewish community of Athens. He said the memorial will remain open and accessible to the public.
The memorial, which was designed by Greek American artist DeAnna Maganias, was erected in 2010. Located in a small park overlooking the Keramikos archaeological site, the memorial features pieces of a broken marble Magen David, each representing a lost Greek Jewish community. The names of the communities are engraved in the marble piece pointing in the direction where they once existed.
