Police in northwestern England on Sunday said they were investigating vandalism at a Jewish cemetery as a hate crime.
The Greater Manchester Police department said parts of the Jewish cemetery in Whitefield were damaged on Friday or Saturday. Officials said a prominent headstone was damaged, windows and sinks were smashed, and a surveillance camera system was destroyed.
Superintendent Paul Walker said Sunday the police force was "treating this incident as a hate crime, and I want to send a clear message that incidents of this nature will never be tolerated in our communities."
The Community Security Trust, a charity that monitors anti-Semitism, recorded 1,652 anti-Jewish incidents in the U.K. last year. It said that was a record and 16% more than in 2017.
In Paris, meanwhile, police were investigating anti-Semitic graffiti that was found sprayed across a bagel shop in the city's old Jewish quarter.
Police in the French capital said Sunday the word "Juden," which is German for Jews, was discovered Saturday as anti-government protesters and police forces clashed in other parts of the city.
The French League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism showed a photograph of the bagel shop graffiti alongside a photo of a Berlin shop that was marked in a similar way in 1938 Germany.
The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, or CRIF, expressed "indignation and anger after the discovery of a revolting anti-Semitic tag on the window of a Bagelstein shop."
The group said it was an "act that recalls the darkest hours of history."
