A swastika was discovered on a wall near Philadelphia’s Holocaust memorial on Sunday, police said.
The antisemitic image was spray-painted on a building adjacent to the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza, according to the Philadelphia Police Department, which said it immediately launched an investigation.
“The suspect is an unknown male wearing a black mask and a dark jacket (possibly brown) with a stripe across the chest and down the arms,” police said in a press release.
The vandalism comes amid a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents across the United States during the months since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, according to statistics from the Anti-Defamation League.
Eszter Kutas, executive director of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, which manages the memorial plaza, said surveillance video showed the swastika being scrawled on a nearby Verizon building around 1:30 a.m.
“This is unfortunately a devastating incident, a very upsetting incident. But it’s no longer a shocking incident, given what we see in America today,” Kutas said in a phone interview.
“We are living in a new set of realities,” she added. “Our institutions and our people are no longer safe here.”
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