On the eve of the anniversary of an infamous Romanian pogrom, the windows of the Synagogue of Orăștie in Transylvania were smashed by an unidentified group, reported the Stirile Transilvaniei newspaper.

The Iași pogrom was a series of pogroms during World War Two carried out by Romanian government troops under Marshall Ion Antonescu in Iași, Romania. Over 13,000 Jews were massacred during the period between June 29 and July 6, 1941, one third of the Jewish community.

The vandalism to the historic building’s windows was discovered on Monday morning by two archeologists employed by the local Museum of Ethnography and Folk Art.

They reported the hate crime to police.

The Synagogue of Orăștie is over 100 years old. The building was restored in the early 2000s. Since then it has hosted cultural events.

With anti-Semitism an increasing problem in Europe, synagogues have become easy targets for anti-Semitic vandals.

On May 12, 13 suspects were arrested in three anti-Semitic incidents, following the escalation in Israel and the Gaza Strip.

The suspects threw stones at a synagogue [in Germany – North Rhine-Westphalia], burned Israeli flags and set fire to a monument to a synagogue which was destroyed in the 1938 Kristallnacht riots.

Less than a month later, Police in Germany’s state of Baden-Württemberg said that firefighting teams had extinguished a fire in a synagogue in the city of Ulm.

According to reports, the fire was set early Saturday morning by an unknown individual, who can be seen on video arriving at the synagogue and pouring flammable liquid in front of the building prior to attempting to light it on fire.

Source: Arutz Sheva