Unidentified vandals have knocked over about 20 tombstones in the Jewish cemetery in the Polish town of Łódź. Agence France-Presse reports that representatives of the local Jewish community there say most of the tombstones will be renovated soon thanks to foreign sponsors.
Local police reported the desecration of the cemetery in this town in central Poland today. "An investigation of this incident is underway," said Adam Kolas of the Łódź Police Department’s press section. The tombstones were desecrated during the early morning hours of Monday.
Prior to WWII, Jewish people comprised almost one-third of the inhabitants of Łódź, which had a population of half a million. During the war, in 1940, Nazis established their first ghetto on occupied Polish territory in the town. It was the last to be liquidated.
Approximately 220 000 Jewish people, most of whom did not survive the Holocaust, were crowded into dilapidated old buildings in a four kilometer square area there, surrounded by barbed wire and isolated from the rest of the town. Jewish people from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Luxembourg were deported to what was called the "Litzmannstadt ghetto".
