Swastikas discovered on Holocaust survivor’s car in Florida

Two swastikas were found drawn in the dust on a car window that belonged to a Holocaust survivor in South Florida just before the start of Passover.

Bianca Higdon told NBC Miami that the two anti-Semitic markings were discovered in the dust that gathered on the car of her late grandfather, Charles Antmann. 

Her grandfather was born in Germany in 1921 and was persecuted under the rule of the Nazis. His parents were killed during the Holocaust but he survived and came to the United States, later serving in the U.S. Army.

Antmann passed away a few years ago and his family, who live in New York, have kept his car in the same spot outside of his former residence in Hallandale Beach. The condominium he owned is currently rented out by Higdon. Higdon told the outlet that her grandfather’s former aide regularly checks on the car for the family.

The discovery came on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover and just days before Antmann’s birthday.

The family filed a police report with the Hallandale Beach Police Department.

“This is very hard for me,” Higdon told the outlet.

This isn’t the first incident of anti-Semitic vandalism reported in Florida in recent weeks, according to NBC 6.

Over the weekend, the phrase “Communism is Judaism” was spray-painted on the wall of an auto center in Miami.

Elsewhere across the nation, there has been a rise in hate incidents.

According to a report released by the Anti-Defamation League last year, anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. in 2019 occurred at their highest rate in at least four decades. A record 2,100 incidents of assault, vandalism and more were reported across the country.

In February of this year, a set of Holocaust memorial statues were destroyed at a Tulsa, Okla., Jewish art museum and swastikas were spray painted on a synagogue in Spokane, Wash.