Several Jewish cemeteries and a Holocaust memorial have been desecrated in Greece, the country’s Jewish council said Monday, just days after neo-Nazi leaders were jailed in a landmark trial.
A graffiti saying “With Jews you lose” was sprayed Friday onto a monument dedicated to the 50,000 Jews of Thessaloniki in northern Greece exterminated during the Holocaust, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) said in a statement.
The words “Death to Israel” were also discovered at the Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki, while four tombs were vandalized in the Jewish cemetery on Rhodes island in the southeast.
The acts of vandalism come after the leader of Greece’s neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn and his inner circle were handed 13-year prison sentences on Wednesday.
The sentences represented a major downfall for a party that had been the country’s third most popular in 2015 when the trial began.
In total, more than 50 defendants were convicted of crimes ranging from running a criminal organization, murder and assault, to illegal weapons possession.
KIS, which represents the Jewish community in Greece, said it “condemns this new wave of vandal attacks, launched by the followers of bigotry and fanaticism.”
Greece’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, denounced the desecration of the monument in Thessaloniki as “an unacceptable act which damages the memory of our fellow citizens and all victims of Nazism.”
On October 5, a Jewish cemetery had also been desecrated near Athens just two days before the verdict of the Golden Dawn trial.
“Juden Raus”, a phrase once used by the Nazis that means “Jews Out” in German, had been painted in black on the outside fence of the cemetery in the town of Nikaia, along with a symbol similar to the swastika used by Golden Dawn.
HD Editors Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?
Throughout history, there has been an unrelenting, irrational hatred of the Jewish people. This hatred is what we know today as ‘Antisemitism.’
There are many “reasons” why people choose to hate Jewish people. The fact is their antipathy has nothing to do with their reasoning; the truth is their hearts are already predisposed to hate Jews.
The actual reason is the Jewish people are the “Chosen People of God.” God hand-selected the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be the line of the savior that will bless the world and defeat Satan. The devil has tried to foil God’s plan by attempting and failing to wipe out the Jewish people for thousands of years. He will try again through the Anti-Christ, where he will yet again fail. (See Revelation 12)
In Genesis 12:3, God not only calls all the nations of the world to bless Israel, but it also presents a warning to those nations and people that choose to curse them: “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”
The Bible also says God will ultimately judge nations by how they treated the Jewish State of Israel (Joel 3:2).
