A group of Jewish tourists from Israel and the US visiting the gravesites of Rebbes and scholars in Easter Europe discovered in the city of Sochaczew (pronounced: Sokhatchev) in central Poland several memorial structures as well as a few graves that were desecrated with crude graffiti. The text included the statements, “Holocaust never happened” (accompanied by a Hitler Smiling Face), and “Islamic State was here.” There was also “Islam will dominate,” and a vulgar comment about Jews. One large memorial wall called on Allah to bless Hitler, which, by many accounts, is just too late.
On September 3, 1939, at the very beginning of the Invasion of Poland, Sochaczew was bombed by the Luftwaffe. German forces remained in Sochaczew until January 17, 1945, when the town was captured by the Red Army. During the war, Sochaczew lost more than 4,000 residents, all of them Jewish, and almost half of its buildings were destroyed.