Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Teenage Yeshiva Boys Save Drowning Man With Swastika Tattoo

(JTA) — A group of teenage yeshiva boys saved a man from drowning in the Chestnut Hill Reservoir in Boston.

The man they saved, it turned out, has a tattoo of a Nazi swastika on his hand.

The incident occurred last week, NBC10 Boston reported.

The teens, who study at a yeshiva high school in Brighton, Mass., saw the body and then ran to the police car of Boston College Police Officer Carl Mascioli.

Mascioli pulled the body out of the water. He told NBC Boston that the submerged man did not have much time left and would have died if the teens had not spotted him and taken action.

Mascioli said that he told the man with the swastika on his hand that it was a group of Jewish teens who saved his life. “I kind of let the gentlemen know sometimes some deeds have a funny way of turning around,” he told NBC10. “Their good deed had a little bit of a twist to it.”

The teens asked the police officer to tell the man that it was Jewish teens who saved him and that they had no regrets about helping a man with an anti-Semitic tattoo.

He is expected to make a full recovery.

A message from our Publisher & CEO 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.