Holocaust memorial bench destroyed and thrown in lake in Salford

A memorial bench fitted with an audio box telling the story of a local Holocaust survivor has been destroyed in a park.

Police are investigating after the bench was smashed and dumped into the boating lake at Clowes Park in Salford on Wednesday.

The bench carried the voice of the late Chaim Ferster, who had moved to the city after surviving eight Nazi death camps including Auschwitz – where 30 of his relatives died.

The damage has been described as a “vile act of hatred” and a “disgusting” act of antisemitism by Jewish groups.

The bench had been installed in Clowes Park, where Ferster liked to walk his dog, by Salford Council in 2019.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism said the audio bench had enabled Ferster to “speak to future generations from beyond the grave” and “warn against hatred”.

A spokesman for the group told the BBC: “It makes us despair that so many years later, something made for the local community to educate and foster good relations between all people has been so wantonly destroyed.

“With antisemitism and Holocaust denial continuously rearing its ugly head, we need swift and strict action against the thugs who did this.”

Ferster was taken from his original home in Sosnowiec, Poland, as a 20-year-old in 1943 but survived the brutality of the Nazis as well as malnutrition and typhus.

He witnessed mass executions, children crying for their murdered parents, bodies being burnt in the gas chambers and survived death marches.

His mother, father and two sisters were killed during the Holocaust.

At the time of his death in 2017 aged 94, one of his sons, Stuart Ferster, said: “His greatest fear was that people would forget the horrors of the Holocaust.

“That is why he spent so much time giving lectures in schools and colleges.”

Greater Manchester Police said: “We take these kinds of incidents extremely seriously and are following all lines of enquiry.”