Police Investigating Anti-Semitic Graffiti Found at Auschwitz-Birkenau Site

Anti-Semitic graffiti has been discovered on barracks on the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau II Nazi death camp, the memorial and museum running the site said on Tuesday, condemning the act as “outrageous.”

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial preserves the Auschwitz death camp set up on Polish soil by Nazi Germany during World War II. More than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, Hy”d, were murdered in gas chambers at the camp or from starvation, cold and disease.

The graffiti included statements in English and German, as well as two references to often-used sayings frequently used by anti-Semites, the memorial said in a statement.

“An offense against the Memorial Site – is above all, an outrageous attack on the symbol of one of the greatest tragedies in human history and an extremely painful blow to the memory of all the victims of the German Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau camp,” the memorial site tweeted.

Police are analyzing and compiling documentation as well as reviewing video footage of the incident, after which the memorial said it would remove the markings.

It added that the security measures at the site were being expanded but that fully enclosing the memorial site would not be possible for some time.

The announcement of the discovery came on the same day that the European Commission unveiled a new strategy to counter what their own research shows is a disturbing rise in anti-Semitic incidents, particularly online.