Anti-Semitic slogans discovered near Nazi work camp in Lithuania
Published April 24, 2013
(JTA) — Lithuanian police discovered Nazi slogans drawn on a former concentration camp after Adolf Hitler’s birth date.
The slogans “Heil Hitler,” “Jews out” in German and a swastika were scrawled on the pavement near the HKP 562 labor camp in Vilnius, Evelina Pagounis of the Vilnius police told AFP, the French news agency. She added that police were looking for the people who put it there. The graffiti was discovered April 22, two days after Hitler’s 124th birthday.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius commented on the graffiti, saying in a statement: “It is especially horrific that these anti-Semitic slogans appeared near two historically sensitive sites for the Jewish nation.”
The work camp also is situated near an area where Nazis selected which Jews would be sent to work and which to death.
The Lithuanian government on April 23 approved a special program of events for September to mark the 70th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto.
Today, a few thousand Jews live in Lithuania, an ex-Soviet nation of three million people that joined the European Union in 2004.
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