The main gate at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Photo: Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.

Wooden barracks at the Auschwitz II -Birkenau death camp memorial site in Poland were vandalized with antisemitic phrases as well as Holocaust denial slogans, staff operating the memorial grounds disclosed on Tuesday.

Signs of the act were discovered on Tuesday on nine wooden barracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum site, the institution said in a statement. They included spray-painted inscriptions in English and German, some of them “antisemitic in nature.” There were “two references to the Old Testament, often used by antisemites, and denial slogans,” the statement read.

“Such incident is, above all, an outrageous attack on the symbol of one of the greatest tragedies in human history and an extremely painful blow to the memory of all the victims of the German Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau camp,” the museum stated.

The museum said that the handwriting of the slogans would be analyzed, and that police have opened an investigation into the vandalism, with available video material now being examined.

“We hope that the person or persons who committed this outrageous act will be found and punished,” the museum said.

Staff at the museum called on anyone who may have been in the vicinity of the death camp site on Tuesday morning and witnessed the incident to come forward, particularly anyone with photos taken around the Gate of Death, at the entrance to Birkenau, and the wooden barracks.

The institution said that while the security system of the Auschwitz Memorial, which includes the 420-acre site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, is in the process of being expanded, it is financed from the museum budget, which it said was hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is estimated that about one million Jews were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, built in occupied Poland by the Nazis, during the Second World War.