Woman Finds Swastika on Her Door, Fights Back With Dumbledore

Image by Facebook
A woman in Michigan came home last week to find a swastika painted on her door. Instead of despairing, she decided to fight back – with love and magic lifted from the pages of a beloved Harry Potter book.
Last week, Erin Zettle posted a public message on Facebook describing the hateful attack.
“There was fear and rage and disbelief, while I wondered who could have done it and do they know me and was it religious or political or just nasty?,” she wrote, adding “And I cried, and cried.”
After Zettle calmed down, she decided that she wouldn’t judge her community “based on the worst of actions.”
But she did want people to know about it – so she decided to leave the symbol up and not remove it.
“What I really want is for people to see that this happened in our community,” Zettle wrote. “It happened to someone they know. And so maybe the next time they hear something in line at the grocery store they will say ‘No, thank you…not here, not today, not ever.’”
Her first thought was to correct the graffiti with some red spray paint, because it’s painted backwards. “You should double check your hate speech before you paint it,” Zettle joked in her Facebook post.
Instead, she put a quote from Harry Potter on top of the swastika, leaving parts of it still visible.

Image by Facebook
“There is enough really awful hate talk in the world. And maybe not enough Dumbledore,” Zettle wrote in the post.
“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light,” is said by Professor Dumbledore in The Prisoners of Azkaban, the third Harry Potter book. It is one of the most famous Harry Potter quotes and often put on posters, mugs or even tattoos.
A couple of days later, Zettle took to Facebook again to express her gratitude for the community that has rallied behind her after the terrible attack.
“Having the quote on the door also helped, in a cathartic way,” she wrote. She exchanged the Dumbledore quote for one by Martin Luther King Jr., and plans to put up a new quote very couple of days.
Zettle could not be reached immediately for comment.

Image by Facebook
Lilly Maier is a news intern at the Forward. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter at @lillymmaier
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
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 polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion In Trump’s war against campus antisemitism, hate the tactics but don’t ignore the problem
-
Yiddish כ׳בענק נאָך די וועלטלעכע ייִדן וואָס האָבן אָפּגעריכט אַ טראַדיציאָנעלן סדר Longing for those secular Jews who led a traditional seder
מײַן פֿעטער יונה האָט נישט געהיט שבת און כּשרות אָבער בײַם אָפּריכטן דעם סדר האָט ער געקלונגען ווי אַ פֿרומער ייִד
-
Fast Forward Rabbi who left Harvard calls Trump threat ‘reasonable’ — but warns of looming consequences
-
Fast Forward Secretive GOP firm distorts Democratic candidate’s views on Israel in NJ governor race
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
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 comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag 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.