CNA Staff, Jun 24, 2020 / 08:30 am
The mayor of a Dutch town has condemned vandals who defaced an image of Our Lady of Częstochowa and daubed the letters "BLM" beneath it.
Paul Depla, the mayor of Breda, a city in the southern Netherlands, said the incident was "particularly sad for the Polish community, for which the monument is of great value," the Dutch regional newspaper BN DeStem reported June 22.
The image of Our Lady, which is revered by Poles and also known as the Black Madonna, was erected in a park in Breda in 1954 in thanksgiving for the city's liberation from the Nazis.
The Polish 1st Armored Division, commanded by General Stanisław Maczek, freed the city on October 29, 1944. After the war, 40,000 inhabitants of Breda signed a petition to award Maczek honorary Dutch citizenship. When Maczek died in 1994, he was buried alongside his fallen soldiers at a cemetery in the city.