A swastika was discovered on a wall near Philadelphia's Holocaust memorial Sunday, police said.
The antisemitic image was spray-painted on a building adjacent to the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza, according to Philadelphia police, who said they 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 news release.
The vandalism comes amid a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents across the U.S. since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, according to statistics from the Anti-Defamation League.
Eszter Kutas, the executive director of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, which manages the memorial plaza, said security 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.”
The Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza is home to the oldest public Holocaust monument in the U.S., erected in 1964. Police urged anyone with information about the perpetrator in Sunday's incident to call detectives at (215) 686-3093 or submit a tip anonymously at (215) 686-TIPS.
