Germany – On Holocaust Remembrance Day, several portraits of survivors were desecrated in Leipzig

“It’s a catastrophe,” says Luigi Toscano, “that just hurts.” The photographer is standing on the cross platform at Leipzig Central Station. 120 portraits of victims of the Nazi dictatorship can be seen here, and another 20 outside, at Willy-Brandt-Platz. “Against Forgetting” is the title of the exhibition. But before the photo installation was officially opened this Saturday afternoon on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day, unknown persons desecrated several of the large-scale portraits.

Two pictures were damaged in the station building alone, reports Toscano. At least three other daubed photo boards can still be seen outside. The perpetrators smeared a Hitler mustache on the photo of a man whose parents were interned in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and were murdered after the death march in Mauthausen. Just like the portrait of an Austrian whose family fell victim to Kristallnacht. “The paint cannot simply be wiped away,” says the artist. “The pictures need to be replaced.”

As we learned on site, investigators have now secured the first recordings from surveillance cameras in the main station. Two suspects can be seen there. It is still unclear whether there are usable recordings of Willy-Brandt-Platz. Video surveillance is also installed there because the area is considered a crime hotspot and meeting place for the drug dealer scene. As police spokeswoman Sandra Freitag said in response to a “LVZ” request, the police state security agency has taken over the investigation. A political background to the acts is considered likely. The federal police are also involved because they are responsible for the main station area.

There are some indications that the photos were not accidentally damaged in passing. According to information from the exhibition organizer, the apparently identical color and the type of graffiti indicate that the same perpetrators could possibly be behind the attacks on Willy-Brandt-Platz and on the cross platform at the main train station. Just two weeks ago, the installation on Elsterstrasse, which commemorates the Jewish football club SK Bar Kochba, was badly damaged by unknown people.

Attacks have already occurred in Vienna and Baden-Württemberg

According to Luigi Toscano, attacks on his highly acclaimed installations have so far been absolute exceptions. Last September, a teenager at a school in Baden-Württemberg daubed Toscano photos of Nazi victims with Nazi symbols. In 2019, portraits of Holocaust survivors were daubed with swastikas and cut up at his exhibition in Vienna. In view of the war in the Middle East and the threat situation in Germany, authorities had also expressed security concerns in preparation for the Leipzig exhibition, the photographer reported to the “LVZ”. On Friday he said: “I hope nothing happens in Leipzig.”