Swastikas Painted Outside 2 Homes

Two Jewish families awoke Saturday to find swastikas painted in the street outside their homes in the 23200 block of Ostronic Drive, one family said.

Irving Reitzenstein was walking to his car to go to work, he said, when he noticed that a pair of gallon cans of latex house paint, left out to be picked up by garbage collectors, were missing. He then spotted a swastika, about three feet across, painted on the asphalt.

“It was a bit disturbing,” Reitzenstein said, adding that his parents are survivors of the Bergen-Belsen death camp, where they met.

A few doors away, a swastika was painted in the roadway in front of a neighbor’s house, said Reitzenstein’s wife, Stephanie.

She said the vandals must have struck between 1 and 7 a.m. because the painting was done after she returned past midnight from an outing with a youth group from Temple Solael in West Hills, where she teaches classes on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. “I’m not frightened,” she said. “I’m angry.”

A spokesman for the West Valley Division of the Los Angeles Police Department said the incident was being investigated.