The childhood house of famed Nobel Laureate Holocaust novelist, Eli Wiesel, was spraypainted with anti-semitic graffiti on Friday. Vandals painted, “Pedophile. Jewish Nazi who is in hell with Hitler,” in bright pink.
The house in the town of Sighetu Marmatiei in northwest Romania is a protected historical monument and currently serves as a museum
“This grotesque act represents an attack not only on the memory of Elie Wiesel but on all the victims of the Holocaust,” said a statement by Romania’s National Institute for Holocaust studies, which is named after the writer.
Police opened an investigation on Saturday, stating to the press that the location was protected by security cameras.
Wiesel was a strong supporter of Israel and critics of Israel’s policies targeted him, frequently comparing him to the Nazis who tried to kill him. Shortly after Wiesel’s death two years ago, Jewish anti-Israel blogger Max Blumenthal tweeted, “Elie Wiesel went from a victim of war crimes to a supporter of those who commit them. He did more harm than good and should not be honored.” Blumenthal also accused Wiesel of praising “Jewish settlers for ethnically cleansing Palestinians in East Jerusalem.” Blumenthal was a close adviser of Hillary Clinton, who was forced to reject these comments.
In 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary and 15-year-old Wiesel and his family were deported to Auschwitz and later to Buchenwald where he stayed until the death camp was liberated by U.S. troops in 1945. In 1960, Night, his sparse 100-page account of his Holocaust experiences, was published in English. The book went on to be translated into 30 languages, selling over ten million copies in the United States alone.
Wiesel, who passed away two years ago, authored 57 books. When he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, the committee called him a him a “messenger to mankind”, stating that through his struggle to come to terms with “his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler’s death camps”, as well as his “practical work in the cause of peace”, Wiesel had delivered a message “of peace, atonement, and human dignity” to humanity.
