The Wiener Library has condemned the “malicious and depressing” defacement of a poster for its Kristallnacht exhibition, after it was daubed with “free Palestine” graffiti for the second time in a few weeks.

The library, one of the world's leading and most extensive archives on the Holocaust and the Nazis, tweeted a picture of its poster in the nearby Russell Square underground station, advertising its Shattered: Pogrom, November 1938 exhibition.

“Disappointed to see that our tube poster at Russell Square has been defaced once again”, the organisation wrote, adding they hoped it could be "fixed quickly" as the library is "a small charity with a very limited budget".

In mid-October, the same poster was defaced with the words "Free Palestine" scrawled across it, along with a heart. The latest vandalism also contained the words "Free Palestine" and a heart, along with the words "one love".

TfL has been contacted for comment.

Ben Barkow, director of the Wiener Library, said: "This second assault within a few weeks on a poster advertising our exhibition about Kristallnacht is malicious and depressing.

“The November Pogrom of 1938 is not connected in any way to the position of Palestinians in present-day Israel. The false conflation is undisguised antisemitism."

Kristallnacht was a pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany, carried out on November 9 and 10, 1938 on the pretext of responding to the assassination of a Nazi diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, by a Jewish man, Herschel Grynszpan, in Paris.

The Nazis killed more than 90 Jews and deported tens of thousands to concentration camps. More than 250 synagogues in Germany, Austria and the formerly Czech Sudetenland were destroyed, with more than 1,000 more damaged.

Some 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses were destroyed or damaged, with Kristallnacht - 'night of broken glass' - referring to the nationwide, state-sanctioned vandalism.