Jacob Kamaras
THE JEWISH STATE
December 4, 2009
After the Somerset County borough of Somerville witnessed its second swastika incident in a nine-day span, local organizations are streamlining their efforts to find the perpetrator and educate the community about hate.
At 4:05 a.m. Nov. 23, Somerville police found eight total swastikas spray painted at three different spots of the building at 44 Veterans Memorial Drive, including the north wall, a wall underneath the South Bridge Street train overpass, and an adjacent retaining wall near the train tracks, Somerville Capt. George Fazio said. The building is home to the New Jersey Local News Service, a company that provides content for the Newark Star-Ledger and nj.com.
Earlier last month, on Nov. 15, police spotted a swastika and the word "Jews" in black spray paint on a concrete wall at the Somerville New Jersey Transit, in what was the first swastika recorded in Somerville since 1993.
While police initially believed the Nov. 15 swastika was an isolated incident, their attitude has changed. Detectives are focusing on searching for information at local schools, since anti-Semitic graffiti is often a juvenile crime, and interviewing as many area residents as possible, Fazio said.
"Obviously, it causes more concern to us and the detectives are doing more legwork," Fazio said.
Diane Naar, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Somerset, Hunterdon, and Warren Counties, said she has been impressed with the Somerville Police Department's level of concern about the swastikas and their extensive efforts to find the perpetrator. In response to the swastika incidents, the federation has been in contact with police, the Anti-Defamation League, the Institute of Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Raritan Valley Community College, and the Somerville Board of Education, Naar said, making this a "five-pronged effort" for determining how to better educate the community on anti-Semitism and all forms of hate.
The federation has offered to send Somerville more speakers, such as Holocaust survivors, to schools, Naar said, in addition to helping the town access RVCC's other educational resources on tolerance.
"We have to continue to educate people in our community on everything about what this symbol means, and about the reality of the Holocaust and other genocides," Naar said.
"When any group is disparaged, all ethnic and cultural groups are disparaged," she said.
The landlord at 44 Veterans Memorial Drive immediately painted over the swastikas, said Rick Everett, editor of New Jersey Local News Service. After Local News Service wrote a story on the Nov. 15 swastika incident, Everett said that "to have it done on our own building certainly was disconcerting."
The morning they found the most recent swastikas, Fazio said police were responding on another call, returned to their normal location, and smelled that the paint on the swastikas hadn't dried yet.
Somerset County saw seven of New Jersey's nation-high 238 anti-Semitic incidents in 2008, according to the ADL's annual audit, while nearby Hunterdon and Warren counties experienced just one incident apiece. By comparison, Middlesex County, one of Somerset County's neighbors, saw 38 incidents during the same year, in addition to a state-high 43 in Monmouth County and 28 in Ocean County.