As many as 200 headstones were vandalized with swastikas at a cemetery in Glen Carbon, Illinois, Glen Carbon Police Lieutenant Wayne White said.
The vandalism is being considered as institutional vandalism and possibly as a hate crime, White said.
More than 1,300 veterans are buried at the Sunset Hill Cemetery in Glen Carbon, and officials are working hard to get it cleaned up before a Memorial Day event Monday, CNN affiliate KMOV reported. Glen Carbon is located about 20 miles northeast of St. Louis.
The cemetery is non-sectarian, according to the Sunset Hill website.
“To disrespect the dead like that… I mean, it just ain’t right,” John Lake, who stopped by the cemetery on Saturday morning to see if family graves were vandalized, told WMOV.
Last year, a flurry of swastika vandalism was investigated by police in Chicago, Houston and New York City.
In Chicago, the window of a synagogue were smashed and swastikas put on the front door, and in New York, swastikas and Nazi slogans were scrawled on a subway train car.
