Grim Memorial to a Living Sentiment

"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."

Auschwitz death camp memorial site statement

"[Security at the 420-acre site, which is] constantly being expanded [has become difficult as of late. The security is financed through the museum’s budget, which has been impacted by the reduced number of paying visitors during the pandemic]."

"[The graffiti is to remain on the barracks until police] have compiled all the necessary documentation."

"We hope that the person or people who committed this outrageous act will be found and punished."

Auschwitz Museum statement

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, in Oswiecim, Poland. Photo credit: Oscar Gonzalez/WENN.com

During the Holocaust years of organized national institutional genocide against Europe's Jews, no one ostensibly was aware of the lethal menace facing Jewish lives. Despite the very public campaign of de-humanization of Jews, their disenfranchisement, their public humiliations, public beatings and killings, the mass round-ups, incarcerations and public proclamations, the truck and freight-train transports to slave labour camps and death camps, no one knew what was happening. 

Those relative few that did take notice, under threat of lethal punishment themselves, tried to shield a few Jews as their commitment to human dignity and the right of existence. So long after the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviets freeing the paltry few political prisoners, military prisoners of war, conscientious objectors, Roma, homosexuals and Jews -- mostly Jews -- left alive in skeletal condition, there is no one on this Earth who could not know what happened in the barracks and the crematoria. 

Yet there remain and there always will be those who continue to thoroughly approve of the Final Solution to rid the world of the presence of Jews. Among them those who stigmatize world Jewry further by claiming the Holocaust was a pretext, that Jews themselves were involved in its management, that it is used as a crutch to manipulate world opinion. But those who vandalized the Auschwitz barracks knew the Holocaust was real and they would repeat it, if they could.

The world is no friendlier to Jews today than it was in 1939-45; a renaissance of Jew-hatred has once again blossomed into full view, and now that the world Jewish community has a country and a military of its own for legitimacy and protection the diaspora breathes more freely, but it too is a symbol of universal hatred toward Jews: still Jews albeit Israelis. The extermination site's barracks wee spray-painted in a sign of despicable lethality. The message that the unspeakable can be repeated.

Anti-Semitism -- responded 81 percent of young Jewish Europeans to a survey conducted by Europe's Agency for Fundamental Rights -- is an issue in their respective countries. Of that number of respondents, 44 percent claimed to have been targets of anti-Semitic harassment in the 12 months leading up to the survey. The time of the global pandemic has seen an inexplicable rise in anti-Semitism, linking a Jewish conspiracy to SARS-CoV-2, loosed on the world by reprehensible Jews.

Controversially, the yellow Star-of-David forced on European Jews as a demeaning symbol to set them apart from all others during World War 11 under Nazi occupation, was co-opted by anti-vaccination conspirators protesting protective-mask wearing during COVID-19 and societal closures as victimization by health agencies, equating public measures to control the virus with Nazi fascism. Mocking the hell-on-earth for Jews as commensurate with public unease over health measures.

Holocaust museums and memorials during the last two years have been defaced in many American states, as with other areas in Europe. A surge of online activity with hateful content was found and reported by the European Commission, particularly in France and Germany, on Facebook, Twitter and Telegram, with a sevenfold increase in French and 13-fold in German. Resulting in the EU announcement it plans to unfold a new strategy in combatting anti-Semitism.

The Auschwitz 11-Burkenau vandalism marked the barracks with phrases in both German and English, with "two references to the Old Testament, often used by anti-Semites, and denial slogans", stated museum representatives of the nine barracks used to house male prisoners that were defaced.

Most of those who died in the complex of camps at Auschwitz died at the Birkenau extermination camp   Getty Images