The workshop of a stonemason who designed and renovated a monument to Holocaust victims in Poland has been destroyed in a vandalism incident, JTA reported on Monday.
The message “Jews Away” was left on the ruins Saturday night in the village of Wawolnica, located in eastern Poland.
The stonesman, Krzysztof Kolibski, designed a memorial commemorating a mass grave of Jews killed by the Nazis in a forest near the village of Karmanowice. The monument was built in 2018. It honors the Jews murdered in the area in 1942.
Kolibski’s workshop was demolished using a bulldozer, according to the report. Two cars and a stock of stone also were destroyed. Kolibski alerted police to the incident. There are no suspects.
In addition to any anti-Semitic motivation, animosity among neighbors and property disputes may also be involved, according to reports.
At the beginning of June, an anti-Semitic inscription was painted on the Karmanowice monument in a vandalism incident. Kolibski immediately restored the monument.
In April, two swastikas were painted on a monument marking the mass graves of 2,000 Jews from Otwock, in central Poland.
Later that month, an anti-Semitic ceremony took place in the town of Parochnik in southeastern Poland, a day before the onset of Passover, during which a “Jewish” effigy was burned.
The incident was condemned by the World Jewish Congress.