January 15, 2024
@PhillyMemorialPlaza/Facebook
On Sunday, a swastika was spray-painted near the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza in Center City. 'Monument to Six Million Jewish Martyrs,' the sculpture that anchors the plaza, was presented to the city of Philadelphia in 1964.
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.
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.
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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