Swastika Burned Into Lawn in Beverly Hills

Someone burned a swastika into the lawn of an apartment house near Beverly Hills High School last week.

The 7-by-4-foot Nazi symbol, burned in with chemicals, is barely visible from the street, but tenant Harvey Myman said he found it disquieting.

“If the (apartment) house was toilet-papered it wouldn’t bother me so much,” he said.

Dr. Wilmore B. Finerman, owner of the eight-unit building on Spalding Drive, said he believes the swastika was etched onto his lawn as a prank.

‘Didn’t Want to Make Fuss’

“I didn’t call the police because I didn’t want to make a fuss about it,” he said. The swastika was first spotted last Monday.

Lt. Bill Curtis, spokesman for the Beverly Hills Police Department, said there have been no complaints of such vandalism.

But Rabbi Steven Robbins of nearby Temple Emanuel said such incidents should be reported and investigated, and those responsible punished.

“Although it can be just an action of a group of wacky kids . . . when you see it move out of neighborhoods where you’d expect to see it, to neighborhoods where you wouldn’t, then it becomes even more disturbing,” he said.

Whether to report such incidents has always been a matter of debate, said Steven Windmueller, executive director of the Community Relations Commission of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.

“The argument is, if you report this, do you give it publicity and visibility, and at the same time the argument is that, no, you need to report it because it makes the statement that this kind of behavior is inappropriate and socially unacceptable,” he said.

Increase in Incidents

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith said in a report issued in January that anti-Semitic incidents rose last year in California and across the country for the second straight year.

“(Swastikas) are not very common any place but they do occur,” said David A. Lehrer, the league’s regional director in Los Angeles. “In a country of 250 million people, we have 800 incidents. It’s quite commonly a neighbors’ dispute or a problem with children in school.”