Watchdog calls on VA to remove headstones inscribed with swastikas from national military cemetery

Anonprofit civil rights organization committed to preserving religious freedom in the military has asked the Department of Veterans Affairs to remove marble headstones inscribed with Nazi iconography and a phrase honoring Adolf Hitler at the graves of two German prisoners of war in a national cemetery in San Antonio.

Along with the soldiers' names and dates of birth and death, the headstones are engraved with a swastika in the center of an iron cross — an award for valor — and the phrase, "He died far from his home for the Führer, people and fatherland." "The Führer" is the name Hitler gave to himself.

Mikey Weinstein, chair of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), was tipped off to the headstones by a former active duty senior officer in the U.S. military. He shared photographs of the headstones with Salon.

Weinstein, who is Jewish, wrote Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie demanding that the department "immediately replace the gravestones of all German military personnel interred in V.A. National Cemeteries" and ensure that no Nazi-era symbols remain in U.S. military graveyards.