SYDNEY (JTA) – A swastika was painted on the Jewish center in New Zealand’s capital.
Jewish officials said the swastika was painted on the back wall of the Wellington Jewish Community Center building early on May 10. The incident has been reported to Wellington police.
“It was fairly minor and nowhere near as serious as the attack on the Symonds Street cemetery in Auckland last year,” a Jewish official said, referring to the defacing of more than a dozen historic Jewish graves in Auckland. “That tagging had other features [like the ’88’ tag signifying ‘Heil Hitler’] which clearly identified the perpetrators as neo-Nazi, but this tagging doesn’t appear so sinister.”
The Wellington JCC, which houses the city’s only Orthodox congregation, is the “focus of Jewish life in New Zealand’s harbor city capital,” according to its website.
