Ugly scenes of smashed and toppled headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Romania have shocked the country’s dwindling Jewish community and prompted international condemnation.
Vandals badly damaged 73 gravestones in the north-eastern town of Husi earlier this month, amid a surge in anti-Semitic attacks across Europe.
“It’s a very disturbing event, but it’s nothing surprising,” said Maximillian Marco Katz, founding director of the Centre for Monitoring and Combating anti-Semitism in Romania.
“It shows that anti-Semitism is alive, it doesn’t matter who did it,” he told the BBC.
“They didn’t knock down two or three gravestones, they knocked down 73 gravestones – that takes some determination and it takes time.”
A criminal investigation has been opened.
Anti-Semitism threatens Romania’s fragile Jewish community https://t.co/ULUREiOhXC
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 14, 2019