Holocaust memorial
Holocaust memorialFlash 90

Two Holocaust memorials in Greece were vandalized.

A Holocaust memorial in Kavala in northern Greece was smashed on Wednesday night, the Athens-based daily newspaper Ekathimerini reported.

The monument unveiled about a year ago commemorates 1,484 Jews from Kavala who died in Nazi death camps during World War II. The marble veneer of the memorial was smashed with hammers by the vandals, who have not been identified.

“Every act of vandalism on a monument opens a new wound in regards to the history and culture of Kavala, a community that has always been open, always tolerant and respectful of other cultures and religions,” the municipal authority said in statement, according to Ekathimerini.

Days before the attack in Kavala, a Holocaust memorial in Arta in northwestern Greece was vandalized with paint and the word “Yolo.”

The attack came several days after the community held a ceremony to remember its pre-Holocaust Jewish community.

“Only a few days after the remembrance events organized by the municipality of Arta for the deportation and extermination of the city’s Jews in the Nazi concentration camps, the Holocaust Monument in Arta was vandalized. It is obvious that there are still people disturbed by their Jewish fellow citizens even if the latter are dead. They cannot tolerate even their memory,” the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece said in a statement.

“We are confident that both the municipality of Arta and the vast majority of its citizens will not allow the desecration of memory by a few nostalgic obscurantists who vulgarly aim at staining the image of the city. We are also confident that soon the monument will stand again to fulfill its purpose: remind the visitors of the atrocity that led to the annihilation of the Jews of Arta simply because they were Jews and awaken the society that such an absolute evil can happen again unless we strongly preserve our democratic and humanitarian principles,” the statement said.