Twenty cobblestones commemorating members of two Italian Jewish families who were deported to Auschwitz or killed in Rome were dug up and stolen in the early hours of Monday in an apparent anti-Semitic attack.

The bronze-capped cobblestones were embedded into the pavement outside a building in Rome’s central Monti neighbourhood that was home to the Di Consiglio and Di Castro families until World War Two.

Police said they were investigating the incident as a possible hate crime.

Asked about the incident at a news conference, deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, who is also interior minister, said he would do everything to stop such acts of “repugnant anti-Semitism”.

The cluster of stones commemorated 18 members of the Di Consiglio family and two from the Di Castro family. Fifteen were deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and died either there or in an unknown place.

The other five were among the 335 Italian men and boys, including 75 Jews, killed in the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome in March 1944 by occupying Nazis. They were murdered as a reprisal for the killing of 33 German policemen by partisans.

On Monday morning, a gaping hole remained where the stones were.

“This is beyond vandalism. This is a deliberate attempt to deface memory,” said Ylenja Lucaselli, a parliamentarian of the of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party.

The writing on each stone started with the words “Here lived” followed by the name of the person, the date of deportation or arrest and the place and date of death, if known.

The project to place such stones throughout Europe where victims of the Holocaust either lived or worked was started by German artist Gunter Demning in 1992.

Adachiara Zevi, a Jewish community leader and head of the group that places the commemorative stones around Italy, said they are commonly known as “stumbling stones,” because they are meant to provoke thought.

Last year, vandals damaged about 70 Jewish graves at Rome’s main cemetery

A French minister on Wednesday accused Italy’s anti-immigration interior minister, Matteo Salvini, of behaving “like Pontius Pilate”, the Roman official who washed his hands of the fate of Jesus Christ.

Relations between Paris and Rome have soured since Italy’s new government took office in June and immediately moved to close its ports to charity ships that pick up migrants in the sea off Libya, forcing other EU states to step in.

In the latest such incident, France, Portugal, Spain and Germany agreed on Tuesday to take in migrants from the rescue ship Aquarius, after Italy refused to let the vessel dock.

“Mr Salvini today, he’s like Pontius Pilate. It’s obscene,” Loiseau told RTL radio.

Hours earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron was quoted as telling reporters that Italy had “decided to no longer follow international law, in particular humanitarian maritime law”.

Salvini, who is head of the far-right League, accused Macron of hypocrisy on Wednesday, saying the French had turned back more than 50,000 migrants from the Italian border “in recent months”.

“We do not accept lessons on rights or humanity from Mr. Macron,” Salvini said in a statement.

Italy has taken in more than 650,000 migrants over the past five years. Under European Union regulations, asylum seekers are meant to stay in the first EU country they enter until their application has been processed — a process that can take years.

However, many migrants reaching Italy want to head immediately to wealthier northern countries, including France. The French have barred migrants from crossing their borders, saying EU rules have to be respected.

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