PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia police are investigating after someone spray-painted a swastika on a building adjacent to a Holocaust memorial in Center City.
The vandalism appeared on the east side of the Verizon building at 16th and Arch streets, adjacent to the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza.
“The Holocaust Memorial Plaza is a historic place that stands for tolerance, and it stands there to remember what happened. … It’s a place that remembers the millions of victims of the Holocaust … and we take there teachers and students and the general public to teach them these important lessons about history so we can all together build a different future together,” said Eszter Kutas, executive director of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, which manages the site.
Surveillance video shows someone wearing a black mask and a dark jacket approach the wall at about 1:30 a.m. Sunday and spray-paint a 2’ x 2’ swastika on it.
“Sunday morning around 11 o'clock I started to get phone calls and emails from people who drove by the site alerting me that there was a hate symbol graffitied at the site,” said Kutas.
Police were alerted to the incident around 2:20 p.m. Sunday.
The wall was sandblasted to remove the image, but more work will be needed to get the wall back to normal.
Anyone with information is asked to contact investigators at 215-686-3093 or submit an anonymous tip to 215-686-8477.
“Antisemitism has been drastically rising in the United States over the past seven years, but what we are seeing since Oct. 7 is a staggering rise in antisemitism,” Kutas said.
“Our Jewish community, currently, is really living through an extremely challenging time. We have never seen antisemitism in America, like we're experiencing, before. So when you have an incident like this, it brings our community together to show support for one another.”
Kutas says she has heard words of support from inside and outside the Jewish community.
“Antisemitism does not happen in a vacuum. When one minority is experiencing these kinds of challenges, it is simultaneous to other communities, so this gives us an opportunity to stand together in solidarity to make sure we are supporting communities that are facing similar challenges and they will do the same for us.”
Hate begets hate
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and kidnapping 240 others to hold as hostages in Gaza.
The Israeli government in response, pledging to crush Hamas and end its governance of the territory, has killed some 24,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in a sustained campaign of air and ground strikes, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.
These months of warfare and destruction have echoes around the world. The act of vandalism comes as the Israel-Hamas war surpasses 100 days. Since Oct. 7, the Anti-Defamation League has recorded at least 3,098 incidents of antisemitism.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported 2,171 complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian action from Oct. 7 to Dec. 2. A mosque in West Philadelphia was vandalized in late December.