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Portland police have launched a bias crime investigation after a vandal drew several swastikas this week at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.
Workers were left shaken after discovering about a half-dozen antisemitic emblems on the front door and a window mural at their Northwest Portland museum.
“Anger. Sadness. Frustration. Fear. All of that,” Rebekah Sobel, the museum’s executive director, said Saturday. “This is the first time it’s ever happened at this building.”
The incident occurred after midnight Tuesday, and the museum shared photographs and security camera footage with investigators that morning, Sobel said.
Portland police on Saturday confirmed they are investigating the case as a bias crime but had no suspect information to share.
Separately this week, Portland police on Tuesday afternoon issued a public notice asking the public to help them identify a man believed to have drawn a swastika in June on the door frame of a business in Northeast Portland. That business featured Jewish cultural practices, including displaying a menorah in the front window.
Asked about any potential connection between the June and July incidents, Sgt. Kevin Allen, a spokesperson for the Portland Police Bureau, reiterated that investigators do not have any suspect information to share at this time.
“Detectives will of course consider if there could be a connection between this crime and others,” he said in an email.
Although the museum hasn’t been vandalized with a hate emblem before, the memorial it’s responsible for in Washington Park has. Four years ago, the same markings were scrawled on the Oregon Holocaust Memorial, which recognizes the 6 million Jewish people murdered by Adolph Hitler’s Nazi party before and during World War II.
The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education are the only such facilities in the state. The vandalism was a “painful reminder” of “why our work matters – and why we must continue it with strength and clarity,” the museum said in a statement to supporters earlier this week disclosing the incident.
The museum has taken extra security precautions in the aftermath, and Sobel encouraged Oregonians to use this opportunity as a learning moment.
“We’re inviting people to stand in solidarity with us at the museum and the memorial,” she said. “Bring your friends. Tell them about the work that we do.”
“Our work,” she added, “seems more important now than ever.”
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