The defaced mural “Halt! Stoj!” by AleXsandro Palombo. Photo: Provided

Two more murals by Italian contemporary artist aleXsandro Palombo in Milan, Italy, that draw attention to antisemitism and the Holocaust were vandalized shortly after they debuted on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, The Algemeiner has learned.

In honor of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on Jan. 27, Palombo created two large murals that focused on antisemitism and denial, and paid tribute to three of the last living Italian survivors of the Holocaust and the Auschwitz concentration camp. All the Stars of David on the two street artworks were defaced by vandals.

In the first mural, the large blue Star of David has been removed from the Israeli flag draped over the shoulders of Italian-Hungarian writer and poet Edith Bruck as she stands under the words “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”), which is the motto featured on the main gate of Auschwitz. The mural is aptly titled “Arbeit macht frei.”

Palombo’s second mural features Bruck as well as Italian Senator Liliana Segre and Italian author Sami Modiano. All three Holocaust survivors are depicted as characters from “The Simpsons” — a popular style for Palombo — while dressed in striped concentration camp prisoner uniforms. They also wear bulletproof vests that have yellow Stars of David on them as they stand under the words “Arbeit macht frei.”

To the left of the three Holocaust survivors is a sign that says “Halt! Stoj!” with a skull and crossbones symbol, which is seen throughout the Auschwitz concentration camp. Pope Francis is additionally portrayed with a sign on his chest that reads “antisemitism is everywhere” while with his hand he shakes a bell, to warn the world about the spread of antisemitism. All the Stars of David on the mural — titled “Halt! Stoj!” — have also been removed by vandals.

The defaced mural “Arbeit macht frei” by AleXsandro Palombo. Photo: Provided

The defaced mural “Halt! Stoj!” by AleXsandro Palombo. Photo: Provided

Last year, another mural by Palombo about antisemitism and the Holocaust was repeatedly defaced in Milan in Novemberand then completed painted over by antisemites in December. He has since recreated that defaced mural, and it was recently acquired by the Shoah Museum in Rome, where it will be a part of the institution’s permanent collection. It is now on display in front of the ancient complex Portico d’Ottavia in the historic Jewish ghetto of Rome.

“The repeated attacks on works of street art dedicated to the memory [of the Holocaust] and portraying survivors of Auschwitz not only cause infinite bitterness, but also show how the value of democracy and all our freedoms are in danger,” Palombo said in a statement. “Segre wanted the word ‘indifference’ to become a warning, the key to understanding the cause of evil, and it is clear that those who continue to be indifferent to these repeated antisemitic outrages become accomplices to this terrible social, civil and cultural drift.”

Mario Venezia, president of the Shoah Museum in Rome, described the vandalism of Palombo’s new murals as “despicable.” She said the museum is working with Palombo to recreate the defaced artworks.

“Edith Bruck, Liliana Segre, and Sami Modiano, with their tireless commitment to dialogue, have always chosen the path of constructive confrontation, speaking to thousands of young people and interacting with civil and religious institutions. And yet the acrimony of the haters has struck again, defacing the works that the artist aleXsandro Palombo had dedicated to them,” she said. “This time, too, we will not remain silent. We are already working to restore what has been violated, forcefully reaffirming our message. We do so to honor the survivors, to send a clear signal to those who attack the memory [of the Holocaust] and to all those young people who, with passion and respect, support its value and legacy.”

Palombo has included a “Simpson” reference in many of his artworks. For a mural created at the Iranian Consulate in Milan in 2022, he created a lookalike of Marge Simpson but had her iconic hair cut in solidarity with Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian woman who died while in custody of Iran’s morality police for not wearing a hijab correctly in accordance with the country’s Islamic laws. Carolyn Omine, the executive producer of “The Simpsons,” shared images of the mural on X.

Palombo has regularly created social-political art throughout his 30-year career. In 2015, he created a series of works titled “Never Again, The Simpsons deported to Auschwitz” and painted part of the series on the walls of the Shoah Memorial in Milan in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2023. That mural has been defaced five times, including once when vandals wrote “W Hitler” and “F—k Israel” over the artwork.

In October 2024, Palombo’s mural that highlighted Vlada Patapov — a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre that took place during the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, — was also defaced by vandals. In November 2023, a month after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Palombo painted a mural that featured Holocaust victim and teenage diarist Anne Frank next to a girl from the Gaza Strip. He made a second mural of a boy from Gaza dressed as a Hamas terrorist. The boy stands next to an adult terrorist and together they point their guns at a young Jewish boy from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust.

The post New Mural in Milan Against Antisemitism Vandalized, Stars of David Again Defaced first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A propaganda video produced by neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division showing supporters on a shooting exercise at a white supremacist “training camp.” Photo: Screenshot.

US federal prosecutors in Maryland have convicted 29-year-old Brandon Russell, co-founder of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, for planning to strike the state’s power grid in hopes of sparking a racial war.

On Monday, after an hour of deliberation, a jury found Russell guilty of one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, the Associated Press reported. He had developed the plan to use a sniper rifle to shoot at electrical substations around Baltimore with his girlfriend Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 36, who a judge sentenced on Sept. 25, 2024 to 18 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release after her acceptance of a plea deal.

Russell faces as much as 20 years imprisonment; his defense attorney Ian Goldstein said they plan to file an appeal and that his client’s conviction was a result of “a setup from the very beginning.” Prosecutors said that had Russell’s plot succeeded, the damage could have topped $75 million.

In 2017, Russell pleaded guilty to possessing an unregistered destructive device and unlawful storage of explosive material. The following year, while incarcerated, he and fellow inmate Clendaniel began a correspondence which led to a romantic relationship following their releases.

Former US Attorney General Merrick Garland said at the time of Clendaniel’s sentencing that “those who seek to attack our country’s critical infrastructure will face the full force of the US Department of Justice.” He added that Clendaniel “sought to ‘completely destroy’ the city of Baltimore by targeting five power substations as a means of furthering her violent white supremacist ideology.”

Russell and Clendaniel embraced the neo-Nazi “accelerationist” ideology, which advocates for violence in order to provoke societal collapse. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) described the word as “a term white supremacists have assigned to their desire to hasten the collapse of society as we know it. The term is widely used by those on the fringes of the movement, who employ it openly and enthusiastically on mainstream platforms, as well as in the shadows of private, encrypted chat rooms. We have also recently seen tragic instances of its manifestation in the real world.”

The antisemitism watchdog group also explained that Atomwaffen Division is “one of several new neo-Nazi groups whose rise paralleled the post-2015 growth of the alt right segment of the white supremacist movement. Atomwaffen distinguishes itself by its extreme rhetoric, influenced by the writings of a neo-Nazi of an earlier generation, James Mason, who admired Charles Manson and supported the idea of lone wolf violence.”

The post Neo-Nazi Leader Found Guilty for Plotting Attack on Maryland Power Grid first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Security footage of the alleged assault of a Jewish boy in Rome on Jan. 29, 2025. Photo: Screenshot/Castelli Notizie

An Egyptian asylum seeker in Rome beat an eight-year-old Jewish boy wearing a kippah on Thursday, according to police and Italian media reports.

At Rome’s Via Nazionale street, the 33-year-old homeless man — not yet identified by authorities — allegedly yelled at the boy to remove his kippah before hitting the child, according to security video shared by law enforcement. The boy tried to hide between his mother’s legs and covered his face, prompting the assailant to grab him before kicking and punching.

A shopkeeper nearby witnessed the attack and intervened, prompting the suspect to attack him with shards from pieces from a glass bottle as he used a chair to deflect the assault. Other men stepped in to restrain the attacker.

Italy’s General Investigations and Special Operations Division and Rome’s police searched for the man and arrested him on charges of causing the permanent disfigurement of a person’s face with an object. Law enforcement did not charge the suspect with a hate crime or reveal a motive for the assault.

The asylum seeker had reportedly arrived in Rome recently following France and Belgium refusing him entry. He has received international protection status in Italy, but now the Immigration Office of the Police Headquarters has started a review of his case.

In February 2024, the Observatory of Antisemitism of the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center Foundation released a report showing the increase of antisemitic incidents in Italy from 2022 to 2023. The group identified 454 incidents — 259 online and 195 offline — which included one assault and 40 threats. This total nearly doubles the number recorded in 2022, which reached 241.

According to research released last month by the Anti-Defamation League, 13.1 million people in Italy show higher levels of antisemitic attitudes, agreeing to six or more antisemitic tropes.

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