Auschwitz survivor's house defaced

Bucharest : Police in Romania are investigating anti-semitic graffiti found on the walls of the house where Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel was born, a media report said.

Comments painted in pink included the remark that Wiesel, who died in 2016, was "in hell with Hitler". They were quickly removed, the BBC reported.

Police spokeswoman Florina Metes said on Saturday that officers were probing CCTV footage from the house in the northern town of Sighetu Marmatiei, where Wiesel was born in 1928.

"This grotesque act represents an attack not only on the memory of Elie Wiesel but on all the victims of the Holocaust," said a statement by Romania's National Institute for Holocaust studies.

In 1944 Wiesel's family was deported to Auschwitz, where his mother and one of his sisters were killed in the death camps. His father died at Buchenwald.

Wiesel's use of the term "Holocaust" helped cement the word's association with Nazi atrocities against the Jews.

In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for his role in speaking out against violence, repression and racism.