ATHENS (EJP)---Greece's cybercrime police unit has been called to investigate after a video showing a youth urinating on the Holocaust Memorial in Rhodes and laced with strongly anti-Semitic lyrics was posted last week on the Internet website YouTube.
Greece's Jewish community has protested to Greek authorities over the anti-Semitic video."We are troubled by the incident and disappointed by the absence of an official reaction," Moses Constantinis, head of the Central Board of Jewish Communities (KIS), said.
Constantinis said KIS had expected a reaction from the prosecutor on the island of Rhodes but since none came the community plans to file a legal complaint.
The Central Jewish Board sent a letter to Greek Interior Minister Prokopi Pavlopoulo asking "for extra security for the synagogue in Rhodes as a large number of Jewish tourists are expected during the upcoming High Holidays."
The incident was allegedly carried out by a group of students from the island's prestigious Venetokleio public school.
"The Star of David makes me throw up, Auschwitz I love you so," says the song to a chorus of "Juden Raus" (Jews stay out).
The song also pledges to "throw Zyklon gas in your synagogue" and insults renowned Nazi war criminal hunter Simon Wiesenthal and Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who died in the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany and whose diary under the Nazi occupation gained her global posthumous fame.
A message posted on the private website http://venetokleio.hi5.com says the act was carried out by "a secret group of Venetokleio pupils who do not like the Jews who want to turn the island into a second land of Canaan."
"After all the propaganda we get in school books... we have decided to take the situation in our own hands," says the message on the site, which is headlined with a picture of Adolf Hitler.
The group appears to be made of young neo-Nazis.
In a reaction, Yiannis Papadomarkakis, the school’s headmaster, condemned the incident and told EJP that he refuses to accept the idea that the culprits are his students. “I bet my life that they are not students of our school,” he said.
"I don't know who would want to involve our school and besmirch our reputation.... I know my pupils and they are good children, we have never given cause for such concern," he said.
He added: “Be assured that if students of our school are involved I will send them for prosecution.”
"In any case, the person seen in the video is too old to be a pupil.”
The Central Jewish Board has sent a letter to Greek Interior Minister Prokopi Pavlopoulo asking "for extra security for the synagogue in Rhodes as a large number of Jewish tourists are expected during the upcoming High Holidays."
Inaugurated in June 2002, the Holocaust Monument commemorates the extermination by the Nazis of 1,694 Jews from the island and the nearby island of Cos who were deported to Auschwitz on July 24, 1944.
The monument already suffered in the past years. During its construction, workers protested of being harassed by bystanders who shouted “Get out Jews”, “You’ll turn us all into Jews,” “You’ll bring Sharon here” and even hurled stones. A 24 hour police protection was needed to complete the works.
Later, however, unknown people badly damaged the monument by erasing the engraved lettering.
A demand by the Jews of Rhodes to the archaeological service for permission to built a bulletproof glass and protective rail around the monument was denied on the ground that visitors should be able to have close proximity to the monument.
2002 was reportedly one of the worst years concerning anti-Semitism in Greece with incidents rerported in Athens, Salonika, Rhodes and Ioannina.
Once dubbed "Little Jerusalem," Rhodes took in several hundred Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century who joined those already on the island.
Between the two world wars, the Jewish population of Rhodes reached about 6,000.
Today, only 40 Jews still live on the island.
Some 67,000 Greek Jews perished in the Holocaust, 86 percent of the country's entire Jewish community.
The Jewish community of Greece today numbers around 6,000 people.
