The Holocaust memorial on Benjamin Franklin Parkway was vandalized early Sunday morning with antisemitic graffiti.
An unidentified male spray-painted a swastika on a wall of the Verizon Building, which borders the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza, just west of 16th Street between the parkway and Arch Street, around 1:30 a.m., police said. The vandal was captured on surveillance footage wearing a black mask and a dark jacket with a bright stripe across the chest and along the arms. The investigation is ongoing, and as of early Monday afternoon, Philadelphia police have no updates on the case.
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Plaza officials said the graffiti would be removed as soon as possible in a Facebook post.
“Earlier this weekend, a vandal drew a large swastika on the wall at the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway — a disgusting act of antisemitism that comes amid a staggering spike in anti-Jewish hatred across Philadelphia and the country more broadly,” the post reads.
@PhillyMemorialPlaza/Facebook
The suspect was captured on surveillance footage.
Antisemitic graffiti was reported on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus in the fall. Members of Alpha Epsilon Pi, the 110-year-old Jewish fraternity, discovered a spray-painted message reading “The Jews R Nazis” on a vacant building next to their fraternity house.
Both incidents illustrate a rise in alleged hate crimes against Jewish, Muslim and Arab people since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War. A mosque in West Philadelphia was vandalized two weeks ago and the United Muslim Islamic Center in Point Breeze was vandalized last October.
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