Anti-Semitic messages found at historic Romanian synagogue

Members of Romania’s Jewish community filed a complaint with police Monday after anti-Semitic graffiti and Holocaust-denying messages were discovered on the facade of a synagogue in the of Cluj-Napoca.

“It is the desecration of a historical monument, we notified the police, the gendarmes and the town hall,” said Robert Schwartz, president of the Jewish community of Cluj.

He said the wall of the building had been defaced with graffiti of a Star of David crossed out with an ‘X’ and a message written in English “The Holocaust never happened.”

“I hope that anti-Semitism will not re-emerge. Here in Cluj the inhabitants are known for their tolerance,” Schwartz said, adding that “this has not happened for at least 10 years” in the city.

Built in the Moorish style at the end of the 19th century, the synagogue was dedicated to the memory of the more than 130,000 Jews deported from Northern Transylvania to Auschwitz in May 1944, including about 17,000 Jews from Cluj and surrounding towns.

Today the Jewish community has 400 people in Cluj and several thousand in the rest of Romania — both due to the Holocaust and the departure of many Jews to Israel under the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.