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Jewish Cemetery in Northern Hungary Vandalized

Gravestones were vandalized in a Jewish cemetery in northern Hungary.

Up to 20 gravestones, including two crypts, were vandalized over the weekend in the Jewish cemetery of Gyongyos, in northern Hungary, the MTI-Hungarian News Agency Corp. reported on Sunday, citing Peter Weisz, the leader of the local Jewish community. Tombstones were toppled and smashed, and human remains were removed from the crypts, according to reports.

The fence around the cemetery also was vandalized, Weisz told Hungarian media.

One of the city’s deputy mayors on Sunday visited the site and offered the city’s help to repair the damage, as did the Catholic Church, according to MTI. The cemetery was similarly damaged in 2013.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary called the attack a “barbaric act.”

The Jewish community of Gyongyos is comprised of about 80 people, out of a total city population of about 30,000.

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