Vandals chop down trees dedicated to Holocaust victims
July 21, 2022
The Buchenwald concentration camp memorial said Thursday seven trees dedicated to the memory of victims of the Nazi camp in eastern Germany have been chopped down.
"We are shocked by this targeted attack on this memorial," the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation tweeted after the discovery this week.
It posted pictures showing the trees severed about halfway up the trunk, and said it was "appalled at the deliberate attack on remembrance."
The foundation has filed a complaint with the police.
Memorial spokesperson Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau said the trees, which were located outside the memorial's actual grounds, had been dedicated to the children who died at Buchenwald.
Vandalism at Buchenwald common
Lüttgenau said vandals have previously targeted plaques and signs at the site and sometimes spray swastikas on them.
Attacks are also not uncommon on trees and plants, he added.
On Wednesday, officials reported that vandals also scratched a sign giving directions to the ash pits where the Nazis disposed of incinerated human remains from the camp's crematorium.
Buchenwald was one of the first concentration camps set up by the Nazis, in 1937.
More than 56,000 of the 280,000 inmates held at Buchenwald and its satellite camps were killed by the Nazis or died as a result of hunger, illness or medical experiments before the camp's liberation on April 11, 1945.
lo/wmr (AP, dpa)