Twistringen – Vandalism at a Jewish cemetery in Twistringen: Unidentified people knocked over two gravestones and tore out a sign.
A visitor to the cemetery discovered the devastation on Sunday afternoon. She immediately alerted the police. The two tombstones that had been knocked over were broken in the middle. The sign was found in a bush in the cemetery, torn from its anchorage.
The exact time of the crime remains unclear. The police suspect that the property damage occurred on Sunday. The visitor who discovered the damage had already visited the cemetery on Sunday morning and noticed nothing unusual. It was only on her second visit around 4:40 p.m. that she came across the devastation.
Bodo Gideon Riethmüller, the cemetery specialist for the regional association of Jewish communities in Lower Saxony for 26 years, is horrified by the act: “Anger comes up, sadness comes up and a lack of understanding as to how people can do something like that.” Riethmüller is responsible for 216 Jewish cemeteries in the country. Only nine days ago he was informed of damage to property at the Jewish cemetery in Leer.
