Menin Gate offered to the citizens of Ypres for the ornament of their city and in commemoration of the days where the British Army defended it against the invader." Reaction to the Menin Gate, the first of the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission's Memorials to the Missing, ranged from its condemnation by the war poet Siegfried Sassoon, to praise by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. Sassoon described the Menin Gate in his poem 'On Passing the New Menin Gate', saying that the dead of the Ypres Salient would "deride this sepulchre of crime". Zweig, in contrast, praised the simplicity of the
Memorial to Polish Soldiers and German Anti-Fascists of East Germany. In recent years, concern mounted as to the amount of vandalism and graffiti inflicted on the monument. In 2004, a German company agreed to sponsor the maintenance of the monument. In 2005, the memorial was defaced with neo-Nazi slogans. The monument is frequently used for skateboarding. Memorial to Polish Soldiers and German Anti-Fascists The Memorial to Polish Soldiers and German Anti-Fascists (; ) is a war memorial in Berlin, dedicated in 1972. Built by the German Democratic Republic during the division of Germany, it is today the principal German monument to the Polish soldiers who died in