Residents of a heavily populated Jewish area in Oakland awoke recently to find their neighborhood vandalized with black spray-painted markings resembling swastikas.
At least eight symbols, two of which residents confirmed to be actual swastikas, covered the Longridge Road sidewalk, a street sign, a Lakeshore Homes Association sign and the concrete base of the gates marking the Crocker Highlands community at Longridge Road and Lakeshore Avenue.
Six similar black spray-painted markings were also discovered the same day in nearby Piedmont, though in this case, they were not confirmed to be swastikas. Piedmont police collected paint samples from the scene and are keeping the case open, but they doubt the crime was hate motivated.
“One was put in front of a Jewish home, but the majority were in front of houses with Christmas decorations and American flags, so there doesn’t seem to be targeting,” said Piedmont Police Department Capt. John Hunt. “They were not swastikas, unless someone was trying to make a swastika and failed. They may be a person’s [graffiti] tag.”
Both the FBI and the Anti-Defamation League are in agreement with the Piedmont police.
The targeted area in Oakland’s Crocker Highlands development, meanwhile, is located within walking distance of a kosher bakery, butcher and restaurant, and the city’s only Orthodox shul, Beth Jacob Congregation.
“As the East Bay goes, it is probably the most Jewishly identified neighborhood there is,” said Ben Marcus, a Beth Jacob member, who moved into the neighborhood three months ago. He estimates that at least five Jewish families, including his own, reside within a 15-house vicinity of one another on Longridge Road, although none of their homes was targeted.
At least three neighbors reported the Dec. 26 incident to the Oakland Police Department, according to neighbor Leslie Edelman. It remains unclear whether or not the incident is under investigation.
Repeated phone calls from the Jewish Bulletin to Oakland police were not returned as of press time. Residents of the affected area also said the police declined to return their queries.
“I’m not sure there’s much left to investigate,” added Edelman. Soon after the graffiti discovery, neighbors, the Lakeshore Home Association and city of Oakland workers gathered to cleanup the offending markings.
Aside from stepping up neighborhood watch efforts, there are no immediate plans to pursue further action in the Crocker Highlands neighborhood; neighbors are fairly certain the swastikas and markings were an immature childhood prank rather than an intended hate crime.
Despite that assessment, Edelman and other residents were outraged that such an incident hit so close to home. Crocker Highlands is an extremely tolerant place, they said, even bearing bright yellow signs designating the area a hate-free zone.
“We live in an extremely ethnically diverse and tolerant neighborhood and have never seen any indication of Aryan superiority or anti-Semitism,” said Edelman, who has lived in Crocker Highlands for five years. “All my neighbors, Jewish, non-Jewish, Asian, African-American, were horrified that this happened on our street.”
Edelman, who has five children ranging from age 1 to 9, had spoken with her older kids about Nazis and World War II in the past. As a result of the vandalism, she felt she should discuss the topic again.
“We talked about what the swastika means and how it’s a symbol,” said Edelman. “It’s very hard to explain to young children how people could have such hatred, but we did talk about it.”
Marcus’ wife, Melanie, meanwhile, discovered the graffiti while walking to work at the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay and was “deeply disturbed” by the sight. Even though she agrees the incident was “an act of total ignorance, since most the swastikas were drawn incorrectly,” it still stopped her “dead in my tracks.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I just looked around, afraid someone was watching me,” said Marcus, the mother of 3-year-old twins. “People just need to understand that it is not funny. Swastikas affect Jews in a serious way.”
Marcus, who teaches a fourth-grade religious-school class at Congregation Beth El in Berkeley, often focuses on the Holocaust as part of her course. To see a symbol, which she usually only talks about in class, soiling her neighborhood “meant a tremendous amount.”
“You think of how far Jews have come in this world and how we are such an accomplished people overall, and then something like this happens” she said. “The fact that they decided to make that logo rather than any other, is really a wake-up call. We can’t forget, even now, that anti-Semitism exists.”