The Jewish cemetery in the city of Wroclaw in southwest Poland was recently vandalized, with dozens of headstones toppled by a group of 12-year-olds who wanted to build a fort.
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The incident took place last week. Local police arrived at the cemetery and discovered a group of five children using a hammer to knock down headstones and break them apart. Some had already been completely smashed, while others were only partly damaged.
In total, 63 headstones had been destroyed, 20 of which were targeted on the day the children were caught in the act.
The children were taken to the police station and questioned with their parents present. There were no indications that the vandalism was antisemitic in nature.
However, in 2019, the same cemetery was targeted when anonymous vandals spray-painted "Jesus is king" on its walls.
The Jewish community of Wroclaw, also known as Breslav, is one of the oldest in Europe, dating to the 13th century. One of the headstones in the cemetery is dated 1203, the earliest evidence of Jewish life in Poland.
In 1933, when the Nazis rose to power, Wroclaw was home to some 20,000 Jews, but that number plummeted by half after Kristallnacht, when all the city's synagogues were destroyed. Most of the Jews who still lived in Wroclaw when World War II broke out were murdered in the Holocaust.
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