By Tim Stelloh -
NBC News
A park near the Anne Frank Memorial in Boise, Idaho was vandalized this weekend with anti-Semitic graffiti, marking the second time in a year this area has been targeted with messages that authorities have called " abhorrent. "
The most recent incident occurred at the Boise River Greenbelt on Dec. 4, the last Saturday of Hanukkah, said Ryan Lee, the Boise Police Chief.
"We are reaching out to the Jewish leaders of our community to let them know that
we will not tolerate such hateful and abhorrent behavior in our city
," Lee said.
The graffiti was quickly removed, the police department said in a statement.
A tunnel near the Anne Frank monument in Boise, Idaho, was recently vandalized with graffiti and is in the process of being cleaned up. Capture via NBC News
"The anti-Semitic messages from the graffiti found throughout the Greenbelt put a literal and figurative stain on our community," said Mayor Lauren McLean on Twitter.
"
This will not be tolerated
."
It was unclear whether authorities had identified a suspect.
A Boise police spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The memorial, an educational park in downtown Boise, founded in 2002 and run by the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, was attacked last year
with stickers of Nazi swastikas with the phrase "we are everywhere
.
"
Dan Prinzing, the center's executive director, told NBC affiliate KTVB that those "cowardly messages" left in the park this weekend were part of an attack done "under the protection of darkness."
[A subject attacked worshipers in New York with machetes]
"But what bothers me the most is the shameless pampering of extremism in broad daylight," he told the aforementioned media, indicating that state authorities have compared vaccination mandates and the use of masks to wearing a yellow star;
what Jews were forced to do during the Nazi occupation of Europe.
"What is the impact we can expect from that," he said.
"It has emboldened the hatred that we now see occurring."
The Boise monument is apparently the only one dedicated to the Holocaust victim Anne Frank in the United States.
Frank and his family spent 761 days in hiding from the Nazis in a secret loft in Amsterdam.
After being discovered, the girl was sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp,
where she died at the age of 15
.
His diary was first published in 1947.
