WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Two swastikas were painted on a monument marking the mass graves of 2,000 Jews from Otwock, in central Poland.
The swastikas painted by unknown vandals were discovered on Saturday. On the same day, they were washed away by a local priest and a local businessman.
The monument consists of a stone with plaque in Hebrew and Polish. It commemorates the Jews executed there by the Germans in August and September of 1942.
The vandalism was reported to local police, who inspected the site on Saturday.
After the policemen finished gathering evidence at the monument, a local priest, Bogdan Sankowski, together with the owner of the local funeral parlor, Sławomir Moc, and his employee, Marian Czarnecki, cleaned the monument, removing the painted swastikas.
The ghetto in Otwock was established in the fall of 1940. About 12,000 Jews passed through it. In August and September of 1942, 7,000 Jewish ghetto residents were taken to the Treblinka extermination camp.
The monument on the site of mass graves in Otwock was built in 1949. A new plaque was placed on the monument in 2012 by the Committee for the Remembrance of Otwock and Karczew Jews and The Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites.