Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

California Police Say Hitler Graffiti Not A Hate Crime

(JTA) — Police have not classified graffiti referencing Adolf Hitler on a Northern California school as a hate crime.

The graffiti was discovered Saturday at the Edison Elementary School in Alameda, which has suffered several anti-Semitic incidents this term, the East Bay Times reported Wednesday. It was drawn in marker and quickly cleaned up, according to the report.

It was reminiscent of some dialogue from the popular sitcom “The Office.”

“It was a line said by the star of the series to one of his employees during season 6 episode 25,” Alameda Police Lt. Hoshmand Durani told the East Bay Times by via email. “It’s readily available on YouTube. Our case is closed and there’s no further police follow-up.”

The incident comes after racist phrases were spray-painted at five locations at the school in November.

In the same district, a Jewish student at Alameda High received a series of anti-Semitic text messages from a classmate. Meanwhile, recently at a nearby high school, students allegedly formed a swastika during a dance and offered a Nazi salute.

The Edison school hosted a meeting May 31 featuring Jacqueline Regev, an education director for the Anti-Defamation League, who talked about promoting tolerance.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.