Students Grapple With Lesson in Hate : Destruction: The cleanup and the healing begin at school that was target of anti-Semitic attack.

The smell of fresh paint was in the air at Valley Torah High School on Monday and walls that once bore marks of hate are now a glistening white.

But only days after vandals defaced the North Hollywood school with swastikas, Ku Klux Klan symbols and profanity, students and administrators are grappling with scars that will not soon be wiped away.

“It’s left an indelible mark that will stay for a long time,” said David Solomon, 17, president of the school’s student council. “When you walk into your school and see the kind of hatred that exists for your people, it’s not easy. . . . It hurt.”

Last Friday or early Saturday, intruders broke in and spray-painted walls, furniture and equipment with anti-Semitic statements, police said. They also stole a computer and a typewriter, and scattered papers and files about the offices. Police said they have no suspects in the break-in.

“It was disgusting,” Solomon said. “I felt personally attacked.”

Still, students and administrators say the incident, though painful, has served to strengthen their resolve.

On Monday, the school’s principal, Rabbi Avrohom Stulberger, gathered the young men of the small private school together and spoke to them of bigotry and the persecution that has characterized much of Jewish history.

Even today, Stulberger told them, “People are trying to say to us, ‘Don’t be Jewish. Don’t be different. Don’t do what you believe.’

“The minute you think you’ll be safe by hiding your Jewishness, ask the survivors of Nazi Germany if it meant anything to these hatemongers,” he said.

Anti-Semitic graffiti and symbols and references to Adolf Hitler also were inscribed on the walls of two classrooms and a stairwell at Cal State Northridge over the weekend. The damage was discovered on Monday and police said they have not determined whether the crimes are related.

Such incidents, which occurred just weeks before the religious festival of Purim, serve as reminders that “we as Jews ultimately have to help ourselves and strengthen ourselves,” Stulberger said. The Purim holiday celebrates the 5th Century BC deliverance of Jewish people in Persia from a plot to destroy them.

Students said the vandalism has unified those associated with the school, some of whom gathered there Sunday to clean and paint over the damage. “I’m very proud of them,” Stulberger said.

Help also has come from the community, with offers of support and donations to pay for replacing stolen equipment pouring in.

“It wasn’t just the Jewish community,” Stulberger said. “It was the entire community.”

The incident has caused students and parents to reflect and, in some instances, to remember painful incidents of the past.

“We had one parent who was in tears,” the rabbi said. The man had come from Hungary and the incident reminded him of persecution of the Jews in Europe.

U.S.-born Raviv Barak, 16, lived for six years in Israel and said he had not experienced hate crimes until he moved to Los Angeles. “People ridiculed me because of my faith, because of what I wear,” he said, referring to his yarmulke.

The worst thing about the vandalism “is not the physical damage--that was bad enough,” Raviv said. “But it’s just knowing that it’s still going on. . . . It’s just pure racism.”

Anti-Semitic incidents have been on the rise in California.

Woody Garden, 17, and many other students at the school say that they will not yield to self-pity.

“You can’t wallow in it,” he said. “If you start to feel sorry for yourself this gives them a sign that they’re winning the battle and they’re going to keep doing it. We have to show them that we’re not going to stop.”