An Italian mural depicting a tearful Anne Frank holding an Israeli flag was vandalized to edit out Holocaust victims and paint over it the words “Free Gaza.”
Street art in Milan’s Piazza Castello has been produced by contemporary artist AleXsandro Polombo to mark a month since Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israeli civilians.
It depicts a Holocaust icon standing next to a girl in a traditional keffiyeh burning the terrorist organization’s flag.
The work is part of Polombo’s “Innocence, Hate and Hope” project, which Israeli art historian Batya Brutin calls “an important warning message to the world.”
Another mural included in the project depicts the famous Warsaw Ghetto Boy with raised hands, held hostage by Hamas terrorists.
The mural was also vandalized — with the boy removed from the image so that it only showed terrorist soldiers and a Gazan child soldier.
Polombo has since spoken out about his work being tarnished.
The street art in Milan’s Piazza Castello was created by contemporary artist AleXsandro Polombo to mark one month since Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israeli civilians.Getty Images
“This gesture of antisemitic racism is to erase the memory to impose their terrorist thoughts, but this act of cowardice does not scare me, and I will continue to defend our democratic freedom of speech, and with my art, I will respond to the violence that they want to drag us into it,” he said, according to the Jewish Chronicle.
“However, this vandalism only reinforces the meaning of the piece and compels us to respond even more forcefully because it highlights all the anger and social dangers of this ongoing antisemitic machine of hatred.”
The artist argued that the act of vandalism “is a demonstration of terrorist thinking that affects the freedom of all of us.
A mural in Milan depicts a tearful Anne Frank waving an Israeli flag next to a Palestinian girl burning a Hamas flag.@aleXsandroPalombo
“If politics and institutions do not respond forcefully to antisemitic violence, then we all lose: legitimizing these gestures means legitimizing terrorist thinking in our society as well. And that is what Hamas propaganda wants,” he continued.
Hamas’s “antisemitic rage” is “extraordinarily Jewish in every part of the world; the resurgence of horrors from the past must make us all reflect because it threatens the freedom, security and future of all of us,” Palomo added.
Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini responded that it was “shameful” that the mural was defaced.
“Such actions have no place in our society,” he said in a statement, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“We must stand together against hate.”
We are saddened and disgusted by the antisemitic vandalism that damaged the memorial in Copenhagen honoring the heroic efforts to save Danish Jews from the Nazis.
This type of hatred cannot be tolerated in today’s society. pic.twitter.com/q0lUp1ZlOC
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) November 11, 2023
The mural vandalism comes just weeks after the Star of David appeared on a central building in Rome.
Meanwhile, in Denmark, a Holocaust memorial stone honoring Danes who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Nazi occupation has been defaced with graffiti, and the steps of a nearby amphitheater have been defaced with a Palestinian flag and the words “Free”. Gaza.”
“We are saddened and disgusted by the antisemitic vandalism that damaged the memorial in Copenhagen honoring the heroic efforts to save Danish Jews from the Nazis,” Congress of European Jews aired on X earlier this month.
“This type of hatred cannot be accepted in today’s society,” he said.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
