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More vandalism discovered at Boise's Anne Frank Memorial

Posted at 5:10 PM, May 10, 2017
and last updated 2017-05-10 19:30:38-04

Wednesday morning, the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, home of the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, was alerted to more vandalism on the property. 

This comes after racist and anti-Semitic language was discovered Tuesday morning on tablets containing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

"This morning when we arrived, we were early-alerted to a swastika that had been permanently marked in with ink along the name of a Jewish donor," Dan Prinzing, director of the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, said. 

Natural wear and tear on the tablets combined with the treatment to remove the permanent marker used to vandalize the memorial has the center looking to replace the display entirely. 

"Some of the wording on the UDHR is becoming blurred," Prinzing said. "It's harder to read from the tablets... This isn't just a repair, this is a replacement at $20,000."

After reports of the original graffiti spread nationally, human rights organizations from across the country reached out to offer support and encouragement to the Wassmuth Center and people of Boise. 

"The vandalism hit us so hard emotionally,"  Executive Director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect Steven Goldstein said. 

Goldstein said though his office is in New York City, his thoughts are in Boise. 

"The initial reaction of a couple people was, 'Well, that's Idaho; it's a conservative state, what do you expect?" Goldstein said. "We said, 'The people of Idaho are a great and fair-minded people with a culture that considers everyone an equal."

Goldstein and Prinzing said the vandalism is a sign that now, more than ever, memorials like the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial are needed. 

"We want everybody in Boise to know how proud we are that you've rallied around, in righteous anger and in pro-active social action, a response to this horrible, horrible vandalism," Goldstein said. 

"Idaho's too great to for hate," Prinzing said. "This does not represent us as a state."

Prinzing said, originally, the center felt it was unnecessary to have security cameras at a human rights memorial, but after the recent incidents, there have been discussions of installing them.