Police in Latvia were investigating Monday after a second incident of anti-Semitic vandalism in less than a week. A memorial to Zanis Lipke, a Latvian credited with saving more than 50 Jews from death during World War II, was daubed with paint in the early hours of Monday morning, police said. The memorial was quickly cleaned up by municipal authorities.
The incident came just days after 89 tombstones in the Jewish Cemetery in Riga were daubed with swastikas by vandals. Latvian Foreign Minister Girts Valdis Kristovskis was quick to condemn the latest incident, saying 'recurrent acts of vandalism' were unacceptable. Lipke, who died in 1987, was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Holocaust memorial organization Yad Vashem. Nearly all of Riga's Jews were murdered during World War II by occupying Nazi forces assisted by local volunteers. Several Jewish organizations, including the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, have warned about high levels of anti-Semitism in the Baltic states.
The issue is put into sharp focus every year in Latvia on March 16, when an unofficial parade takes place in the Latvian capital commemorating members of the Latvian Waffen-SS. Of around 60,000 Jews in Latvia at the start of WWII, only 3,500 survived.
DPA
