Unknown vandals painted “Jude Raus” (“Jews Out”) and “at the entrance of the Anielewicz Mound memorial to the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. It was discovered Wednesday, the same day Michelle Obama was visiting a Holocaust memorial in Berlin.
The monument to Mordechai Anielewicz, commander of the uprising, as well as to the rest of the uprising’s fighters, is located on Mila Street, which was a busy thoroughfare in Jewish Warsaw before the Holocaust.
Anielewicz and the staff of the Jewish Combat Organization made their plans and directed operations from a bunker at 18 Mila Street. The Germans surrounded the bunker on May 7, 1943, and most of the 100 resistance fighters and leaders inside the bunker committed suicide, although a few escaped.
After World War II there was no excavation of the remains inside the bunker. Instead, the Anielewicz Mound was created, and a memorial stone on top of the mound recounts the story of the resistance fighters led by Anielewicz.
The vandalism currently is under police investigation. A company that specializes in the removal of graffiti has been retained to clean the monument.
Last March, the same graffiti along with “Hitler Good” in English were found on a large monument at the former Plaszow camp near Krakow. A smaller memorial plaque was also painted with a swastika and “Jude Raus.”
The following day, a march commemorated the 67th anniversary of the liquidation of Krakow’s ghetto, transferring 16,000 Jews to the Plaszow and Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps.
