'F*** Israel' and 'Viva Hitler' scrawled across Jewish Simpsons memorial in Milan hours before Holocaust Memorial Day - as officials postpone pro-Palestine marches across Italy

Memorial depicting Simpsons as Holocaust victims defaced in Milan, ItalyOfficials postponed pro-Palestine marches planned for Holocaust Memorial Day

Anti-semitic vandals today defaced a memorial in Milan depicting the Simpsons being sent to Auschwitz just hours before Holocaust Memorial Day – by scrawling ‘f*** Israel’ and ‘Viva Hitler’ on it.

The mural in central Milan, titled ‘Track 21, The Simpsons Jews deported to Auschwitz’ by Italian artist aleXsandro Palombo, was today defaced by racist vandals for a fourth time, a year after it was first painted at the Shoah Memorial in Milan.

It came as Italian officials in Milan and Rome ordered the postponement of pro-Palestine marches after Jewish communities expressed concern they would take place on International Holocaust Remembrance Day tomorrow, January 27.

Rome’s prefecture said the march through the capital, organised by the ‘Movement of Italian Palestinian Students’ for Saturday, would have to be held ‘on another date, from January 28’.

A similar decision was taken in the northern city of Milan.

The mural in central Milan, titled ‘Track 21, The Simpsons Jews deported to Auschwitz’ by Italian artist aleXsandro Palombo

It was today defaced by racist vandals who scrawled ‘f*** Israel’ and ‘viva Hitler’, a year after it was first painted at the Shoah Memorial in Milan

‘F*** Israel’ and ‘W (viva) Hitler’ scrawled across the Jewish Simpsons memorial in Milan

The Shoah Memorial, at Milano Centrale railway station commemorates the 1,200 Jewish prisoners who were deported from a secret underground platform, Track 21, to Nazi extermination camps – predominately Auschwitz – to be murdered.

Since the beginning of January 2023, The Shoah Memorial has been visited by over 90,000 people, including over 42,000 students.

Artist Palombo said he had portrayed the cartoon Simpsons family being deported to the Nazi concentration camps to ‘tell the story of the before and after the deportation and the horror of the Holocaust’. He said the use of pop culture helps people overcome a ‘visual stumbling block to force us to see what we no longer see’.

He added the work was to ‘raise awareness against Indifference and to alert us to the danger of anti-Semitism in contemporary society’.

The memorial was first vandalised just two months after it was first created and has been defaced three more times, most recently today, after being cleaned on several occasions.

The writing ‘W Hitler’ (‘W’ is often used as a shorthand for ‘Viva’ in graffiti in Italy) and ‘f*** Israel’ appeared today, which Palombo said ‘reminds us how the anti-semitic wave has been completely normalized’.

He has now said that the mural will no longer be cleaned, and that the anti-semitic scrawlings will form an ‘integral part of the work as a testimony against anti-semitism and indifference’.

The artist declared: ‘Not reacting to repeated hateful actions will lead us to normalize the danger of anti-Semitism and strengthen the evil of indifference that engulfs everything and everyone. Anyone who looks away from these acts is complicit in the problem.

‘The latest anti-Semitic insults and those of recent months will remain as testimony and integral part of the work that will transform this sea of hatred into a tool for raising consciousness and awareness against indifference and anti-Semitism.’

Visitors enter in a train car, at the ‘Track 21’ memorial, the site where most of the deportation trains from Italy were boarded during the Holocaust, at the train station in Milan

This came just two months after two other murals by the same artist – of Anne Frank and the ‘Warsaw Ghetto boy’ – which were painted to denounce anti-Semitism were vandalised within 24 hours of being painted on the streets of Milan with pro-Palestinian messages in November last year.

A mural depicting Holocaust victim Anne Frank crying while holding the Israeli flag, in the central Piazza Castello in Milan, was painted over with the words ‘GAZA FREE’.

A Palestinian girl in a traditional keffiyeh burning the flag of terror group Hamas was painted alongside Anne Frank in the original mural but this was not vandalised.

The second mural, which appeared in the area of Porta Nuova Project in Milan, was also defaced. That image portrayed the famous ‘Warsaw Ghetto boy’ wearing the yellow Star of David badge which the Nazis forced Jews to wear.

Victor Fadlun, head of the Jewish Community of Rome, hailed the move to postpone pro-Palestine marches as ‘fair and sensible’, writing on Facebook that it would avoid ‘insulting the memory’ of the Holocaust.

Demonstrators march during a pro-Palestine rally in Milan, Italy on October 10, 2023

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi had said Thursday that it was a complex issue whether or not to postpone the demonstrations, as freedom of expression is a right enshrined in the constitution.

But with tensions running high over the Hamas-Israel war, the events risked ‘drifting away from the values defended by the law, such as in this case’, he said.

Last Saturday, pro-Palestinian demonstrators protesting at the presence of Israeli exhibitors at an international jewellery fair clashed with police in the Italian city of Vicenza.

Maya Issa, president of the student group that had called the march, said it was ‘very serious that the Jewish community can influence a decision already taken by the competent authorities, which authorised the march’.

‘But we respect the law and we will not demonstrate tomorrow,’ she told the AGI news agency.