Nazi Flag Hung Proudly in Brooklyn Neighborhood with Holocaust Survivors

Apartment management is working to remove the insidious flag from a neighborhood that is home to Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans.

By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel

A Nazi flag was spotted on Monday in the window of an apartment in the Coney Island of Brooklyn, New York, an area that is home to many Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans.

The housing management company maintains it doesn’t have the power to order the tenant to take the “most vile symbol of hate down.

The president of the board of directors of Amalgamated Warbasse Houses Inc, which manages the property, issued a letter saying they “were made aware of a resident hanging a most vile symbol of hate on a wall in their apartment which was visible to their neighbors.”

“It surely is vile, disgusting and an affront to any American,” wrote Michael Silverman, but he told residents that “while this flag is abhorrent and goes against everything this community stands for, according to the NYPD this act is not a crime.”

“We are reviewing our legal options,” a clearly frustrated Silverman wrote, adding that the company’s attorneys are checking an executive order by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo outlawing the hanging of the Nazi flag to see if it applied in this case and to find out “what we may be legally permitted to do.”

The flag is hanging in a complex of five giant 24-story co-op apartment buildings with over 2,500 units.

“In an area with a large amount of Holocaust survivors, World War II and more recent veterans who fought for this country and its freedoms, as well as children and grandchildren of these heroes and Holocaust survivors, this highly visible display has a chilling effect,” Silverman said, imploring residents not to take matters into their own hands.

New York State Assembly member Mathylde Frontus tweeted that she attended a rally with local residents, saying she “stood in solidarity with the residents of Warbasse Houses to denounce the recent display of hatred and anti-Semitism by a local resident who hung a huge Nazi flag inside of his apartment to intimidate his mostly Jewish neighbors.”

Local resident Ari Kagan who is a local council member tweeted that “to see this hateful symbol in a peaceful community of Warbasse where the majority of residents are Jewish, is disgusting. I strongly condemn it and I express my solidarity with all my neighbors.”