Jewish cemetery, Holocaust memorial vandalized in Germany

The Associated Press

FRANKFURT, Germany (October 12, 4:14 p.m. PDT) - Vandals desecrated a Jewish cemetery and a memorial to concentration camp victims in two separate incidents over the weekend, officials said Sunday.

Forty-two headstones in a Jewish cemetery near Gundesberg in central Germany were sprayed with graffiti including "Heil Hitler," "Sieg Heil" or simply "Hass," the German word for hate, police in nearby Kassel said.

Separately, a memorial to the victims of a World War II-era concentration camp near the northeastern city of Ravensbrueck was sprayed with anti-Semitic graffiti, a state official said.

Guenter Morsch, who heads the federation for memorials in the northeastern state of Brandenburg, called on police to find and prosecute the vandals, as well as strengthen the fight against extreme right groups.

Roughly 10,000 of the 150,000 women who were interned at the concentration camp in Ravensbrueck died there.