(Jewish Group) Spanish town recently known as Fort Kill the Jews struck with antisemitic graffiti

Spanish town until recently known as Fort Kill the Jews struck with antisemitic graffiti



A tiny Spanish town that has veered over the centuries from being a refuge for Jews to a rallying cry for their death was defaced with widespread antisemitic graffiti.

Residents of Castrillo Mota de Judíos, a village in Northern Spain, began to discover the graffiti almost as soon as they woke Monday.

They ultimately found vandalism in four locations: on the entrance to the town hall, the signpost on the road entering the village, the planned site for the future Sephardic center and the sign commemorating the town’s sisterhood with the Israeli city of Kfar Vradim.

No Jews live in the town, which has only about 50 inhabitants. The vandals were instead taking aim at the village’s history, and the efforts by its current mayor, Lorenzo Rodriguez, to preserve it.

Originally named Castrillo Motajudíos, or Jew’s Hill Fort, in 1035 when Jews fleeing from a neighboring pogrom settled there. The town was renamed Castrillo Matajudíos — Fort Kill The Jews — in 1627, during a period of extreme religious persecution by the Inquisition.

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