NEWARK, Del.- On the evening of May 8, the Delaware Department of Justice says a University of Delaware student is being charged with vandalizing a Holocaust memorial sponsored by a Jewish student group.
Officers from the University of Delaware Police Department arrested Jenna Kandeel, 23, after witnesses reported that she had damaged several flags at the memorial on the University of Delaware's Green.
The report says Kandeel made vulgar statements about the Jewish community and the Holocaust. Kandeel later admitted the vandalism to police officers who took her into custody. The suspect has since been banned from campus and now faces three misdemeanor charges, including Hate Crime.
“We have a proud history of protecting free speech in this country, including and especially political dissent,” said Attorney General Kathy Jennings. “But we need to be lucid enough to recognize the daylight — miles of it, in this case — between protest and hate. The Holocaust is not ancient history. Eighty years later, the world’s Jewish population still has not recovered; its survivors are still with us; and I fear that we still have not learned its lessons. Seeing this ignorance on display, particularly in an increasingly antisemitic climate, should be a wake-up call. We still have work to do.”