PHILADELPHIA — Police opened a vandalism investigation this weekend into the spray-painting of a swastika on a wall next to a Holocaust memorial in Philadelphia.
Authorities say the symbol, which measures about two feet by two feet and is scrawled in green spray paint, was featured Sunday on the wall next to the Horowitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza off Ben Franklin Parkway, a few blocks from City Hall.
Surveillance video captured images of a man wearing a black mask and dark jacket with a stripe across the chest and down the arms appearing to scribble the symbol on the wall around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, officials said. The symbol was removed later in the day.
Eszter Kutas, executive director of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, which manages the memorial, said news of the vandalism was “very, very disturbing, but not shocking to our community.”
It was very concerning to see rising anti-Semitism anywhere, “but it is particularly disturbing to have a hate symbol on a Holocaust memorial square,” she told WCAU-TV.
The monument, perhaps the oldest public Holocaust memorial in the United States, was commissioned by Holocaust survivors and other members of the Jewish community in the 1950s. The monument was established in 1964 and the site was redesigned in 2018 with new educational installations and artifacts.