Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Swastika painted on car parked near Boca Raton
A Mustang parked near Boca was vandalized with a swastika.
Deputies are searching for the person who spray painted a swastika on a car in a predominately Jewish neighborhood in West Boca.
The symbol of the Nazi Party was found on the driver’s door of a 2001 black Ford Mustang about 8 a.m. Sunday by a person walking in the 7000 block of San Sala vador Drive.
Investigators said the vandalism happened sometime between 7 p.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. Sunday.
A woman told a deputy that her son’s Mustang had been parked there for several months, the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office said.
On Monday morning, the woman, who wouldn’t give her name, covered the swastika with black garbage bag and told reporters that her son is in Israel.
“This is intense. My grandparents were Holocaust survivors and to see this. It might not mean something to a lot of other people, but to me it means a lot,” she told Sun Sentinel news partner WPEC-CBS 12.
In a statement Monday, the Florida Regional Director of the
Anti-Defamation League, Hava L. Holzhauer, condemned the vandalism and its timing.
“The swastika remains the symbol of Nazism, and it serves as an unsettling reminder that just two weeks after International Holocaust Memorial Day, such hatred and ignorance still exist in our society.”
An area rabbi, Yaakov Gibber, expressed sadness and shock after seeing the vandalized car Sunday.
“The hatred exists. It must be lost forever,” he said.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Teri Barbera said neighbors in the community are checking security cameras to see whether anything useful appears.