MAHILEU, Belarus -- Vandals have desecrated a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in the eastern Belarusian city of Mahileu.
Authorities said unknown perpetrators poured brown paint on the stone, damaging some 60 percent of the composition.
A leader of the local Jewish community, Navum Yofe, told RFE/RL that the stone marks the site of the Jewish ghetto in Mahileu during the Nazi occupation of the 1940s.
Yofe called it a "pity" that anti-Jewish hatred persists in Mahileu so many years after the war ended.
Jews have lived in Mahileu since the 16th century.
In the 19th century, the town was a center of Jewish religious study and Hassidism and later a center of Jewish nationalism.
Authorities said unknown perpetrators poured brown paint on the stone, damaging some 60 percent of the composition.
A leader of the local Jewish community, Navum Yofe, told RFE/RL that the stone marks the site of the Jewish ghetto in Mahileu during the Nazi occupation of the 1940s.
Yofe called it a "pity" that anti-Jewish hatred persists in Mahileu so many years after the war ended.
Jews have lived in Mahileu since the 16th century.
In the 19th century, the town was a center of Jewish religious study and Hassidism and later a center of Jewish nationalism.