(JNS.org) A Greek town is mired in controversy after its mayor asked to remove the Star of David from a Holocaust memorial before it could be unveiled.

The mayor of Kavala, Dimitra Tsanaka, asked for the Jewish symbol to be removed after a majority vote on the issue by the city council. Tsanaka originally said that members of the council objected to the size and placement of the symbol on the memorial, but she later denied that she had ever wanted the star removed. She later said the monument would be dedicated “very soon.”

The Jewish community and members of the Greek community at large expressed outrage at this request. The Board of Jewish Communities in Greece said the decision was “unacceptable, immoral, and insulting.”

“How can it be that the eternal symbol of the Jewish people – the very symbol that the Nazis required Jews to wear in the death camps and ghettos of Europe during the Second World War – is deemed unfit for public display in Kavala?” said American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said that “to object to a Star of David on the monument is morally reprehensible.”