Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Swastika Carved in Seat of New York Commuter Train

— A swastika carved into a seat on the Long Island Rail Road in New York captured the attention of a commuter, who took a photo of the offending symbol and tweeted it.

“This is a new one @LIRR swastika carved into seat in car 7170 511 train to FR. This goes way beyond poor service,” Jake Adler tweeted on Monday afternoon. Adler is a policy director for New York state for the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center.

This is a new one @LIRR swastika carved into seat in car 7170 511 train to FR. This goes way beyond poor service pic.twitter.com/APFleZvtAl

— Jake Adler (@JakeAAdler) September 19, 2016

He tweeted again on Monday morning after finding that the swastika remained on the train seat: “@LIRR good morning just curious how many riders will see a swastika today in car 7170 since y’all clearly don’t seem to mind.”

The Long Island Rail Road responded an hour later in a tweet saying: “We take these matters very seriously and have reported the car for immediate servicing. TY for bringing this to our attn.”

The railroad took the car out of service to replace the seat. The incident is being investigated.

Workers check for vandalism and graffiti on the trains every day, a spokesperson told NBC New York.

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.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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.