11 January 2008
Four teenagers have been arrested following the desecration of 500 headstones in a Jewish cemetery in New Brunswick, in the US state of New Jersey, last weekend. About three-quarters of the gravestones in the Poile Zedek Cemetery were toppled. It was the largest incident of vandalism in a Jewish cemetery in the United States in recent decades. No swastikas or anti-Semitic graffiti were painted on the stones in the incident. Poile Zedek is one of the oldest and best-known Jewish cemeteries in New Jersey, operated by two local synagogues. Many headstones in the cemetery mark graves dating back to the 1920s. The four arrested youths – a 15-year-old, two 16-year-olds and a 17-year-old – were charged with juvenile delinquency. According to police, nothing so far points to an anti-Semitic background of the incident.
