Richard Vernon Smith, Jr., 18, convicted of smearing swastikas on synagogue walls and of setting a fire in a museum where the damages totalled $30, 000, was sentenced this week-end to a prison term of six to ten years.
Judge Hubert Calhoun, who sentenced young Smith, upbraided him for his anti-Semitism and told him to “forget the tommyrot about Jews. ” The youth, according to police, had called himself a “superman, ” and had described himself as “a hater of Negroes and Jews and a follower of the Nazi beliefs of Adolf Hitler. “
Young Smith confessed that he had smeared swastikas in yellow paint on the walls of two synagogues here, and had made a bonfire of 160 paintings in the Museum of Arts and Crafts here.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.