Holocaust monument defaced in Hanover, Germany

Unidentified individuals sprayed antisemitic slogans on a Holocaust memorial monument in the city of Hanover in Germany on Wednesday, the mayor said.

“These slogans on the memorial in the heart of Hanover are yet another sign of how antisemitism all too often breaks through in our society, seeking its place in its center,” Mayor Belit Onay said in a statement on the website of the municipality.

“Antisemitism is and remains a major problem, and combating it is our duty. We continue to stand by our Jewish fellow citizens,” he added.

Onay, a member of the left-wing Green Party, clashed with the federal government last year over its refusal to allow his city to receive refugees from Gaza. Following the controversy, thousands marched through Hanover to protest the refusal. “Israel is a terror state” was chanted at the rally, which the municipality had authorized.

The municipality said the graffiti incident happened in the early morning hours of Wednesday. “Antisemitic graffiti was discovered at the Holocaust Memorial. The slogans were directed specifically against Jewish people and were written on the memorial. Police officers from the Hanover Police Department covered the graffiti with yellow spray chalk that same day,” the statement said.

Police are investigating the identity of the culprits, it added. Neither the city’s website nor reports in the German media about the incident specified the phrases or symbols spray-painted on the monument. Defacing a Holocaust monument with the intention of inciting hatred against Jews can carry a prison sentence of up to five years in Germany.

“This act is part of a series of attacks on memorial sites in Hanover and the surrounding region,” the municipality said in its statement. “The memorial in Hanover-Ahlem, for example, has been repeatedly targeted with graffiti and vandalism in recent years, most recently in January 2025,” it added.

The monument defaced on Wednesday was for the city’s 6,000 Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. The Ahlem monument was for 840 forced labor workers, most of whom were Jews, who were made to build a tunnel for a rubber company deemed vital to the Nazi war effort. Construction began less than six months before the U.S. 84th Infantry Division liberated Hanover in April 1945.

Germany recorded a historic spike in antisemitic incidents in 2024, with 8,627 cases—the highest annual figure ever documented—marking an 80% increase over the 2023 total, the RIAS government watchdog reported. RIAS has not issued its 2025 report yet but figures published last month for the Berlin area showed a sharp increase over 2024.

In Berlin, authorities had recorded 2,267 antisemitic crimes in 2025, a sharp increase from 1,825 cases in 2024 and 900 in 2023, according to German daily Tagesspiegel. The data from 2025 identified 2,267 incidents, up from 1,825 in 2024 and 900 in 2023, the city’s Senate Department said.