Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev welcomed the announcement that Israeli police arrested three Jewish men suspected of spraying graffiti thanking Hitler for the Holocaust at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust museum earlier this month.
“We appreciate the work of the police, who acted quickly and effectively,” Shalev said.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said: "Israeli police arrested three male suspects, all three from the ultra-Orthodox sector.” He added that they were from Jerusalem, Ashdod and Bnei Brak, and aged 18, 26 and 37. "The suspects were questioned in connection with the graffiti in Yad Vashem, and admitted to carrying out the incident, as well as other similar incidents in Jerusalem's Ammunition Hill and a memorial in the Jordan Valley," he said.
On June 11, Hebrew graffiti thanking Hitler for the Holocaust and denouncing Zionism was found sprayed at Yad Vashem.
"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," read one of 10 slogans daubed on walls at the museum, sparking shock in the Jewish state which came into being just three years after the end of World War II. Other slogans read "The Zionist leadership wanted the Holocaust" and "If Hitler hadn't existed, the Zionists would have invented him."
Suspicion had fallen on extreme anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox opponents of the state of Israel.
Several ultra-Orthodox groups do not believe a Jewish state should exist without the appearance of the Messiah, of which the best-known is Neturei Karta. Rosenfeld said all three suspects were members of that group. Similar slogans were sprayed in April at Ammunition Hill, a former Jordanian military post that now houses preserved trenches, battle fortifications and a museum, and at a memorial for Israeli fallen soldiers and policemen in the West Bank's Jordan Valley.
Avner Shalev said, “I believe that it was important to know the identities of those who spray-painted the graffiti. The suspects are extremist ultra-Orthodox Jews, anti-Zionists, who are on the fringes of society, and do not represent the majority who respect the memory of the Holocaust.”
He added: “Numerous reactions that we received from Israel and around the world, expressing condemnation and repugnance of the graffiti testify that this warped action offended many, and I hope that the court will mete out justice to the criminals.”

EJP