Jews Around World Targeted in Spate of Anti-Semitic Incidents as Passover Starts

Two swastikas drawn on the car of a Holocaust survivor, in Hallandale Beach, Florida.

March 30, 2021

In recent days, as the week-long holiday of Passover got underway, Jews around the world, from Poland to Australia, have been targeted in a disturbing spate of anti-Semitic incidents.

At the site of the former Częstochowa Ghetto, in southern Poland, a memorial to the victims of the Nazis was defaced with swastikas and other hate symbols.

In the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, a swastika was etched on a memorial at the site of a synagogue destroyed by the Nazis.

Meanwhile, police in Romania were looking into death threats issued against Jewish actress Maia Morgenstern and her children, while in Sweden a hate crimes investigation was opened after dolls — accompanied by a written message described by authorities “incitement against an ethnic group” — were hung at a synagogue in the eastern city of Norrköpin.

Online, more than 150 anti-Semitic comments were found on the Google Maps entry for the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, prompting a Google spokesperson to acknowledge “we need to do better” in monitoring hateful content.

In the city of Hallandale Beach, in south Florida, vandals marked the car of a Holocaust survivor with two swastikas, while in nearby Miami the words “Communism is Judaism” were spray-painted on the wall of an auto center.

And in Australia, a Melbourne Jewish woman was verbally assaulted by a man yelling, “You Jewish scum, you will get what’s coming to you,” and then spat upon as she walked home from services at the Temple Beth Israel synagogue.