5 Teen-Agers Are Arrested in Racist Defiling of Synagogue

Five San Diego 16-year-olds have been arrested by police in connection with the racist spray-painting of a San Carlos synagogue early Sunday.

“Dozens” of tips, phoned in to authorities as well as the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, led to the Monday arrest of three girls and two boys, Capt. Mike Tyler of the San Diego Police Department said.

Tyler said “one to two” more arrests were expected in the case, including that of an 18-year-old who, though not directly involved, figures in the case. He said the five minors, two of whom live in San Carlos, had been released to their parents. Officials said the five will most likely be charged with felony vandalism of a place of worship.

‘Outpouring of Support’

“We had a tremendous outpouring of community support and information,” said Tyler, who noted that the suspects’ bragging about the crime triggered many of the tips.

He said three of the youths refer to themselves as Skinheads, the name for the loosely connected neo-Nazi movement said to be responsible for anti-Semitic graffiti being scrawled on synagogues across the country. This case--involving the Tifereth Israel Synagogue on Cowles Mountain Boulevard--follows that pattern, Tyler said.

Three of the youths bear the clothing, hair styles and tattoos common to Skinheads, Tyler said. Two of the girls live in San Carlos and one in Mira Mesa, while the two boys live in the Rolando area, near San Diego State University. Tyler said the crime occurred around 2 a.m. Sunday, hours after the youths had started drinking in the garage of a San Carlos home. The parents of one of the girls own the home but were not around at the time, Tyler said.

Tyler said that none of the five appeared to appreciate the seriousness of the crime until expressions of shock and outrage began to permeate local news broadcasts.

“All are fully aware at this point of being in really serious trouble,” said Police Detective Steve Chelby, who conducted a joint investigation with Al Lutzi of the San Diego County district attorney’s office. “But they were surprised that their activity generated so much uproar. It would be safe to say they were shocked.”

Law enforcement officials echoed Jewish leaders in characterizing the incident as one of the most serious anti-Semitic episodes in San Diego history. Morris Casuto of the Anti-Defamation League said the seriousness of the crime calls for a new response to such incidents.

“This incident was so different in terms of the extensive nature of the graffiti,” Casuto said. “The viciousness of the obscene comments was incredible. It’s clear a different plateau has been reached with this case.”

Rabbi Aaron Gold, leader of the congregation at Tifereth Israel, said the temple had been the object of anti-Semitic graffiti four times in the last three months.

“But never to this extent,” he said. “This was such a major desecration, I thought that surely some crazed adult had to be involved. There were printed statements from the Book of Revelations, which I considered particularly obscene--to use the New Testament as their instrument of hate, rather than love, for which it is intended.

“I’m amazed that youngsters in this day and age can even do something like this. Either their parents taught them to hate, or their peer group. I know that the church didn’t teach them, at least not any church I know about.”

Gold praised members of “the Christian community,” including officials of San Carlos United Methodist Church, across Navajo Road from the temple. He said an ecumenical service, focusing on the problem of anti-Semitism, is scheduled for the temple the day after Thanksgiving. He said many of the people who came to the temple on Sunday to wash away swastikas and “slogans of Hitlerism” were Christians, “with tears in their eyes.” Several swastikas were scrawled across a wall, behind which is the Torah, the most sacred scroll of the Jewish religion.

Gold said a dollar figure on damage to the temple was not significant, except in “a symbolic sense.” He said some of the temple’s stained glass may have been irreparably damaged.

Gold spoke of a connection between the incident and the 50th observance of Kristallnacht, “the night of breaking glass” in prewar Germany, which many perceive as the beginning of the Holocaust and which has received wide media publicity in the past week.

Referred to Himmler

“People who hate want to stick it to you just when you celebrate these occasions,” he said. “Heinrich Himmler (one of Hitler’s Nazi lieutenants) took special delight in executing hundreds of Jews when it came to Hanukkah or other holidays that symbolized Jews triumphing over enemies.”

Casuto criticized Tom Metzger, the Fallbrook television repairman and head of the White Aryan Resistance, whose son, John Metzger, is head of the Aryan Youth Movement. The Metzgers are portrayed in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine as the national leaders of the Skinheads. Asked about Metzger, police officials said Tuesday that while no evidence links him directly to the crime, he “represents the Skinhead ideology, which figures in this case and hundreds like it.”

“Metzger serves as the catalyst,” Casuto said. “Consider what he puts over his telephone hot line. He cannot avoid responsibility for what he puts in his newsletter, in the cartoons that are vicious, obscene. . . . They do nothing but inflame racist hatreds. One cartoon recently showed a black man burning to death and the hooded figure beside him saying, ‘This is more fun than football.’ This is not an incitement to violence?”

Metzger was unavailable for comment Tuesday.

The three girls arrested are students at University of San Diego High School. The two boys attend Mark Twain Junior-Senior High School. Last year, two San Carlos youths who attend University High School were arrested after a friend of theirs was killed in a pipe bomb explosion.

City Councilwoman Judy McCarty, whose district includes San Carlos, said she hoped such incidents “don’t represent a pattern” of juvenile delinquency. She found the latest incident, which police described as a “very serious, very heinous” crime, particularly disturbing.

“I lay this at the feet of the parents,” McCarty said. “Why weren’t the parents of this girl home at 2 in the morning? Where were they? Beyond that, we have to educate these kids. This Skinhead business seems to be the latest thing to let kids feel big and powerful.

“But do they know what they’re doing? Don’t they know that 6 million Jews died at the hands of Nazi Germany? If they don’t, I think we’d better start telling them.”