Hebrew graffiti thanking the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler for the Holocaust and denouncing Zionism were sprayed inside the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, an AFP correspondent said on Monday.
Seven giant slogans — including one that read: "Thank you Hitler for your wonderful Holocaust that you arranged for us, it's only because of you that we got a state at the UN" — were sprayed in Warsaw Ghetto Square near the sculpture depicting the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
More graffiti was sprayed next to the cattle-car memorial, which remembers how millions of Jews were transported from all over Europe to the Nazi death camps.
Other slogans read: "The Zionist leadership wanted the Holocaust" and "If Hitler hadn't existed, the Zionists would have invented him."
Another said: "The war of the Zionist regime is not the war of the Jewish people," fueling suspicion that a small fringe of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are virulently opposed to the state of Israel, were to blame.
The red, white and black graffiti was written in both formal Hebrew characters as well as in handwritten script and signed "The global cynical mafia."
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed basic details of the incident, and said an investigation had been opened.
He said it was not clear who was responsible, whether it was "youngsters, vandals or people acting from other motives."
Yad Vashem is the main museum in Israel commemorating the 6 million Jews who were killed by the Nazi regime during World War II.
