Police continue to investigate after someone spray-painted a swastika Sunday at a Holocaust memorial on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Center City.
The Nazi symbol was found on the east side of the Verizon building, on a wall that serves as the backdrop for Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza, located on the parkway at 16th Street.
Officers were called to the site just before 2:30 p.m. Sunday, though investigators say the vandal defaced the wall at around 1:30 a.m. No arrests have been made as of Tuesday, police said.
Eszter Kutas, executive director of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, which manages the memorial, said she began receiving emails and phone calls about the vandalism late Sunday morning. She went to the plaza and contacted authorities. Later Sunday, a Verizon employee came out and cleaned the wall, Kutas said.
“I can’t say that I was shocked,” she said Monday. “We, as Jewish people, are dealing with a new reality. Our sense of safety and security is gone, and we experience these kinds of incidents as a community all the time.”
The memorial has been vandalized previously, but Kutas told Metro that this is the first incident since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, igniting a war in Gaza.
In the three months since, the Anti-Defamation League has documented 3,283 reports of antisemitism nationwide, a 360% increase compared to the same period last year. The incidents ranged from harassment to protests featuring “expressions of support for terrorism against the state of Israel and/or anti-Zionism.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has also tracked a sharp rise in hate targeting Muslims and Palestinian Americans since fighting broke out in the Middle East.
Andrew Goretsky, the ADL’s Philadelphia director, said in a statement that Sunday’s vandalism “not only desecrates a symbol of remembrance for victims of the Holocaust but also highlights the disturbing rise of antisemitism plaguing our community.”
“We must unite against such hatred, reaffirm our commitment to tolerance, and work collectively to eradicate bigotry,” he added.
Developer and 76ers co-owner David Adelman, a Holocaust Remembrance Foundation board member, on Tuesday offered a $25,000 reward through the Citizens Crime Commission, which operates a tip line 215-546-8477, in an attempt to catch the vandal. The plaza is named after Adelman’s grandfather, Sam Wasserman, who survived being imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.
“To know that a plaza, that was named for my grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, was vandalized with such hate, proves just how much these types of memorials and educational opportunities are needed and the compassion still lacking in our communities,” Adelman said in a statement.
Authorities described the suspect as a man wearing a black mask and a dark, possibly brown jacket with a stripe across the chest and down the arms. Anyone with information can also contact the PPD’s Central Detective Division at 215-686-3093 or call or text 215-686-8477.
Artist Nathan Rapoport’s bronze sculpture, “Monument to Six Million Jewish Martyrs,” was erected at 16th and the Parkway in 1964 and is said to be the nation’s first Holocaust memorial. Survivors of the genocide and local Jewish community leaders came together to gift the work to the city.
In 2018, under the direction of the foundation, the plaza was expanded to include additional educational elements. Among other features, the site now has original train tracks from near the Treblinka death camp and several interpretive panels.
Kutas said the memorial has become a sacred place for generations of Jews to come and remember victims of the Holocaust. In all, about 10,000 people pass through the plaza each year, she said.
Later this year, the foundation, in a partnership with Mural Arts Philadelphia, plans to unveil a mural on the wall that was vandalized. Kutas said organizers are currently in the midst of the artist selection process.
