The damage was discovered hours before Yom Kippur started but it is believed that the vandalism took place on September 30, the night of Rosh Hashanah.
LONDON—Police have appealed for witnesses after headstones were found shattered and upended at a a 300-year-old Jewish cemetery in Kent earlier this month.
Officers were called on October 8 to reports several headstones had been desecrated in the burial grounds of the Chatham Memorial Synagogue in Rochester, Kent.
According to The Daily Mail, thugs used sledgehammers to smash up gravestones dating back more than a century in a suspected anti-Semitic attack.
Headstones were upended, split and laying in tatters with a lone Star of David left on the gravel.
Community members believe the intruders entered the cemetery through a garden path on the night of the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, on September 30.
The damage was discovered hours before Yom Kippur started but it is believed that the vandalism took place on September 30, the night of Rosh Hashanah.
According to chief inspector Ian Dyball, the local Kent Police district commander, an investigation into the vandalism is “ongoing and a number of inquiries have been carried out including reviewing CCTV in the area. We are also working with those responsible for the cemetery and offering crime-prevention advice.”
The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Marie van der Zyl, said “this disgraceful anti-Semitic vandalism will cause huge upset to the families of those buried in the cemetery and to all right-thinking people. The low lives who perpetrated this hateful attack should face the full force of the law.”