‘Warsaw 1943 = Gaza 2025’: Holocaust memorial vandalized in Polish capital

Israel envoy denounces graffiti as ‘shameful vandalism,’ calls on Poland to hold perpetrators accountable for crime

The Umschlagplatz Memorial, in Warsaw, Poland, on April 12, 2023. (Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP / File)
The Umschlagplatz Memorial, in Warsaw, Poland, on April 12, 2023. (Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP / File)

Israel on Tuesday denounced anti-Israel graffiti that was found spray-painted on a Holocaust memorial in Warsaw.

According to the TVN24 Polish news network, the vandalism was reported to police on Friday by someone associated with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which is on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto.

The memorial, known as the Umschlagplatz, marks the location where Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto were ordered to assemble in order to be deported to their deaths in the Treblinka death camp. The memorial was defaced with graffiti reading “Warsaw 1943 = Gaza 2025.”

A police spokesman said they were looking for the perpetrator.

Israel’s Ambassador to Poland Yacov Livne shared a photo on social media of the memorial defaced by the red spray paint.

“Shameful vandalism at Warsaw’s memorial for 300,000 (!) Jews deported to Treblinka,” wrote Livne. “Poland has a special responsibility to protect Jewish & Holocaust sites; hold vandals accountable.

Since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza — triggered by the terror group’s October 7 attack on Israel — a number of Holocaust memorials have been vandalized across Europe.

In August 2024, a Berlin Holocaust memorial was vandalized with pro-Palestinian and antisemitic graffiti, a few weeks after a statue of Anne Frank in Amsterdam was covered with anti-Israel graffiti for the second time in a month.

And in May 2024, the Paris Holocaust memorial was defaced by blood-red handprints. On October 7, 2024, 10 stones that memorialized victims of the Holocaust in the German town of Zeitz were discovered to be missing.

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