Police here today intensified their watch over Coventry Cathedral and over other public buildings, due to a rash of painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans that has broken out here, including desecration of the cathedral itself.
The walls and pillars of the cathedral were discovered last night to have been painted with large swastikas and slogans of a Nazi character. One three-foot high slogan proclaimed “End Jewish Control. ” Another demanded “Release Hess, ” and a third slogan was worded “Support Rhodesia.” The Hess call related to Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s close confidant, who flew to England in 1941 presumably to seek peace. He is serving a life sentence in Spandau Prison, in West Berlin.
Under the various daubings, including a swastika on the wall of the Police Training Center here, were the initials “N.S.M., ” believed to stand for National Socialist Movement. Assistant Chief of Police Stanley Porter said today that “our inquiries will certainly be stepped up to find those responsible for the serious and dastardly defacement of the cathedral.”
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.
