Mural Depicting Simpsons Characters as Nazi Concentration Camp Inmates Gets Vandalized on Yom HaShoah

Shiryn Ghermezian

Wax figurines of The Simpsons family. Photo: Miguel Mendez via Wikimedia Commons

A mural of The Simpsons family dressed as Jewish inmates of a Nazi concentration camp was vandalized in Italy on Tuesday on Holocaust Remembrance Day, also known as Yom HaShoah, according to a statement from Milan’s Shoah Memorial Museum.

Track 21, the Simpsons deported to Auschwitz by Italian artist Alexsandro Palombo is painted on the walls outside of the Museum, which was built on the exact spot used to transport thousands of Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution to concentration camps during 1943 and 1945, according to the museum.

Palombo painted two murals for the museum that depict the family from the Fox animated series as Jewish. One shows Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie Simpson dressed in everyday clothes as well as the yellow Star of David patches that Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust in order to identify them as Jewish. Another mural shows the Simpsons family looking extremely thin and frail as they wear stripped concentration camp uniforms that also feature the yellow Stars of David. Both artworks were unveiled on January 27, which is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Vandals drew black marker over the mural depicting the Simpsons family as concentration camp inmates and covered the Stars of David on their uniforms.

Roberto Jarach, the museum’s president, said in a released statement on Wednesday that surveillance footage from the area will be examined in the hopes of identifying the vandals.

“In the next few days we will be checking the footage from the cameras trying to identify the person responsible,” he said. “What worries us is catching in this act a possible revisionist and antisemitic tendency. What we hope is that the rest of the citizens will respond with its opposite, with solidarity and empathy, proving that the fight against indifference is the key to overcoming racist and anti-democratic derivatives.”

Palombo told Newsweek he believes the crime was motivated by antisemitism.

“In this case we are talking about antisemitism that took place in a very important and symbolic place for the city of Milan and the memory of the Jews, a place from which Italian Jews were deported to concentration camps,” the artist told the publication. “Antisemitism hasn’t disappeared and the mural, popular and symbolic, certainly disturbed the most extreme supporters of denial and revisionist thoughts.”