(JTA) — Graffiti with Nazi imagery and the word “Trump” were discovered in Philadelphia on the same day that Donald Trump won the presidential election.
The graffiti was spotted Wednesday on a South Philadelphia storefront, Philly.com reported. Police are investigating.
One image included the worlds “Sieg Heil 2016,” a reference to the German Nazi greeting. Another showed the word “Trump” with the T replaced with a swastika.
There were additional reports of similar images as well as other racist graffiti in South Philadelphia, according to Philly.com.
Mayor Jim Kenney condemned the graffiti.
“The acts of political and racial vandalism that occurred this morning in South Philadelphia must be condemned in the strongest possible terms,” he said.
The Anti-Defamation League also denounced the “hate graffiti.”
“Swastikas and the Nazi salute send a message of intolerance and hate to the entire community,” Nancy Baron-Baer, the ADL’s regional director, said in a statement. “The fact that today is the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht adds another layer to this already sickening act.”
Wednesday is the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” pogrom in 1938 against Austrian and German Jews that many Holocaust historians view as the opening shot in the Nazi-led campaign of violence against the Jews.
Trump, who has received wide support among white nationalists, released a campaign ad late last week promising to defeat an international global power structure featuring several prominent Jews in the financial world. Critics alleged the ad used anti-Semitic tropes, but the Trump campaign denied the charges.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
