A mural depicting Anne Frank and Primo Levi in Milan has been defaced in what has been described as an antisemitic act of vandalism.
The artwork, created by Italian contemporary artist aleXsandro Palombo at the Montello Barracks to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, featured Anne Frank, the universal symbol of the Holocaust’s innocent victims, seated opposite Holocaust survivor and writer Primo Levi. Above them was a sky filled with Stars of David and the inscription, “Memory Is No Longer Enough.”
Unknown perpetrators vandalised the mural by erasing the original message and replacing it with the words “Zionist Nazi Settlers” (“Coloni Sionisti Nazisti“), painted across the Stars of David. The act directly targeted a work created to combat antisemitism and preserve the memory of the Holocaust.
The mural itself had been conceived as a response to an earlier antisemitic attack on the same wall, transforming a site previously scarred by hatred into a place of remembrance and reflection.
The incident is the latest in a series of attacks against Palombo’s Holocaust-themed public artworks. Over the years, several of his murals commemorating Holocaust survivors, including Liliana Segre, Sami Modiano and Edith Bruck, have also been vandalised. Those portraits have since been acquired by Rome’s Holocaust Museum and are now displayed outside the historic Portico d’Ottavia, at the heart of the city’s former Jewish Ghetto.
The latest vandalism comes amid growing concern over rising antisemitic incidents across Europe, with memorials, monuments and public artworks dedicated to Holocaust remembrance increasingly becoming targets of hate-motivated attacks.
