Holocaust memorial toppled in German town of Baden-Baden

Vandals badly damaged a Holocaust memorial in the German town of Baden-Baden this week, toppling the stone column, local media reported.

The column, located in Willy-Brandt-Platz of the southwestern town, was targeted overnight Sunday and will require significant repairs, which city hall vowed to undertake.

Police opened an investigation. A spokesperson told the SWR outlet in a Tuesday report that the probe was looking at all avenues, and that based on evidence found at the scene, the memorial was deliberately damaged in a politically motivated act, rather than a spontaneous one.

Baden-Württemberg’s antisemitism commissioner, Michael Blume, told SWR he wanted to “stop this madness” and warned that “conspiracy hatred always begins with Jews… it concerns us all, and we should all stop it together.”

The city of Baden-Baden and the local Jewish community urged solidarity, the Juedische-Allgemeine outlet reported Wednesday.

City hall said a stonemason was assessing the damage to the memorial, which will require significant repair work. It said the city will restore the column no matter the cost.

“The memorial commemorates the darkest chapter in German history,” Baden-Baden city said in a statement to Juedische-Allgemeine. “An attack on this symbol is simultaneously an attack on the fundamental values of the city’s society.”

The Israelite Community of Baden-Baden (IKG) said in a statement the vandalism was a “heinous act” of antisemitism with a clear political message and, coming as it did on the night after Tisha B’Av, when Jews mourn the destruction of the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem, “further pain was inflicted in the heart of Baden-Baden.”

It warned that antisemitism in Germany was increasingly being expressed in actions and not just words. Anti-Zionism and antisemitism, it said, have crossed the line from slogans to physical violence

The local Jewish community, with the support of the city of Baden-Baden, was to hold a vigil at Willy-Brandt-Platz scheduled for Thursday evening at 6 p.m.

The memorial plaque was erected by Baden-Baden city in 1988 in memory of the local Jewish community, who, on November 10, 1938, were rounded up by the Nazis and forced to watch as a synagogue was burned and looted.