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Vandals Draw Swastikas On Jewish Temple

POSTED: 4:52 pm PDT April 11, 2008
UPDATED: 5:36 pm PDT April 11, 2008

Police are looking for the vandals who defaced the city's only Jewish temple Thursday.

Someone put swastikas and sexually explicit graffiti on the Temple Beth Sholom in south Salem.

The temple administrator said this is not the first time vandals have struck the temple, but it is the first time it's been anti-Semitic.

She made fliers and handed them out to neighbors hoping to get help catching whoever did it.

Staff of Temple Beth Sholom worked quickly to get the offensive graffiti removed and this afternoon there are only slight smudges left on a window.

"(The graffiti was) sexually inappropriate and kind of an immature thing. It wasn't gang related or anything. Looked like they were just trying to be shocking," Amber Titus said.

Titus discovered the vandalism Thursday morning when she arrived for work.

She found a swastika drawn with permanent marker on a concrete wall of the building, and another one on a glass window.

Police said there was a phrase against Jews and sexually graphic drawings as well.

"(I'm) just really disappointed that a child would choose to do something like that," Titus said.

Gary Day said just after the temple moved into the building, someone knocked over lights at the front sign.

There have been other forms of vandalism over the last two years.

"That's three or $400 to fix that up. This was easy," Day said. "It was relatively small but it was aggravating to people to see it."

Salem police are treating this as a hate crime. But they suspect teenagers did it given the crude drawings and that one of the swastikas was drawn backward.

Neighbors have reported vandalism problems around the temple as well like eggs thrown and mail boxes dented.

Temple administrators hope neighbors will now help keep an eye out.

"This is a good neighborhood, certainly better than the neighborhood we were in," Day said.

Police had gang officers investigate but they don't believe now that it was gang related.

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