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BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem was vandalized overnight Sunday, Israeli police said.

Some of the graffiti, all written in Hebrew and daubed overnight on outside walls, accused Israel's founders of secretly encouraging the slaughter of Jews by the Nazis during World War Two to hasten the creation, in 1948, of Israel.

Vandals sprayed "Hitler, thanks for the Holocaust" and "If Hitler didn't exist the Zionists would have had to invent him," in Hebrew on the entrance to the museum, Israeli daily Ynet reported.

"The vandalization took place in the early hours of the morning," Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld told Ma'an, noting that police are searching for the suspects.

Rosenfeld told Reuters that investigators were working on the assumption the vandals were "members of the extreme ultra-religious community," referring to Jewish groups who oppose Israel's existence.

Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, said he was "shocked and dazed by this callous expression of burning hatred against the Zionists and Zionism."

In other areas, the vandals sprayed "Jews wake up - the Zionist regime is dangerous," and "Israel is the secular Auschwitz of the Sephardic Jewry."

In one area the graffiti was signed "The global Zionist mafia," and another with "the global haredi Jewry," Ynet reported.

The Yad Vasham museum was established in 1953 and serves as a world center for documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust.

Around six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime during World War Two.

Reuters contributed to this report