On synagogues, playgrounds: In NY, swastika graffiti is increasingly common and rarely prosecuted |
NEW YORK — Vandals scrawled at least 11 swastikas on two parks in Queens on Monday. Images of the graffiti, in Highland Park and Forest Park, showed red swastikas painted on a park sign and lined up on a series of white columns.
“This is yet another hateful incident meant to intimidate Jewish New Yorkers and divide our city. And we want to be clear: We cannot and will not accept this as normal,” said New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin.
Nazi graffiti in New York City, home to the world’s largest Diaspora community, is increasingly the new normal, though, with repeated incidents across the five boroughs in recent months, following an escalation last year, according to Anti-Defamation League data.
In some of the recent high-profile incidents, in November, on the night of New York City’s mayoral election, vandals scrawled swastikas on a Jewish school in Brooklyn.
In January, in two incidents days apart, 73 swastikas were drawn on a Brooklyn playground in a Jewish area.
Images showed blood-red swastikas lining a children’s slide and the hate symbols surrounding the name “Adolf Hitler.”
Last month, swastikas were found on a playground in Staten Island.
Last week, swastikas and the words “Heil Hitler” were sprayed on Jewish sites, including multiple synagogues, in and around the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, home to a large Jewish population.
One of the Nazi symbols was sprayed on a congregation’s plaque dedicated to survivors of Kristallnacht, the 1938 riots against Jews in Nazi Germany that marked a turning point in the Nazis’ persecution.
The Nazi symbols have also turned up in recent months in Brooklyn on a storefront, a Jewish social services group, a yeshiva, and outside a Jewish cemetery, and on Manhattan signs, garbage cans and stores.
The Times of Israel located three swastikas within a radius of a few blocks on Manhattan’s Upper........