Holocaust wreaths vandalised

Vandals defaced wreaths laid at a Berlin Holocaust memorial to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Nazis’ Night of Broken Glass, when synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews were deported to concentration camps.

The memorial, a stone set in a bridge over a railway line, recalls local Jews who were deported to Nazi death camps from a nearby freight terminal in the 1940s.

A police patrol discovered that four wreaths had been thrown over the side of the bridge and others defaced, with flowers torn out and ribbons cut. Police said there were no suspects.

The anniversary of the 1938 Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, is commemorated annually by Germany’s Jewish community.

Kristallnacht’s violence, in which thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses were attacked and about 100 Jews died, presaged the Holocaust – the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis.