BERLIN, Germany - A memorial to Holocaust victims was daubed with neo-Nazi slogans and defaced with black paint, police in the eastern German city of Dessau said Monday.

Suspected rightists targeted an open-air exhibit on the production of Zyklon B gas which was used in the gas chambers at death camps such as Auschwitz.

"60 years later and are we still guilty?? No!!!," was painted in big letters over a 15 to 20 metre section of the memorial which includes abstract models of Zyklon B containers, police said.

A police spokesman said it was believed the attack was carried out in the run-up to November 9 which is the anniversary of the so-called of "Night of Broken Glass" in 1938 when Nazis attacked hundreds of Jewish businesses and synagogues across Germany.

The Dessau memorial was opened last January as a stark reminder that about two-thirds of all Zyklon B produced for the Third Reich was made by a company based in the city: the Dessauer Werke fuer Zucker und chemische Industrie