Herrenberg – A twelve-year-old child has admitted to daubing posters of a Holocaust exhibition in the schoolyard of the Jerg-Ratgeb-Realschule in Herrenberg (Böblingen district) with Nazi symbols. “Due to the circumstances, political motivation cannot be assumed,” the police said in a statement. State security was also called in. The school filed a complaint.
The German-Italian photographer and filmmaker Luigi Toscano provided the school with 20 large-format posters featuring Holocaust survivors. Four of them were daubed on Tuesday night, including with swastikas. According to the artist, the damage to the pictures amounts to around 2,000 euros.
The Baden-Württemberg antisemitism commissioner Michael Blume announced that he would visit the school on Wednesday. He was horrified by the graffiti, which was probably made on Tuesday night.
Toscano met and portrayed more than 400 Holocaust survivors for his memorial project “Against Forgetting.” His works have been shown in Kiev, New York, Washington and San Francisco, among others. “There was a similar attack on my posters in Vienna in 2018,” said Toscano.
According to Toscano, the exhibition, which only opened on Monday, will not be canceled, but will continue as planned on the school grounds until October 13th.
Mayor Thomas Sprißler (independent) condemned the vandalism. “It is humiliating and disrespectful that the portraits of the contemporary witnesses were defamed.” Herrenberg is a cosmopolitan city characterized by diversity, plurality and diversity.
Headmaster Alexander Riegler was deeply affected. “The exhibition serves to keep alive and carry forward the culture of remembrance of the crimes of National Socialism. And we will continue to do that Especially now.”
