A wall mural has been defaced with a Nazi swastika only two blocks away from a synagogue, a Jewish school, and a Holocaust center. A Jewish man saw the confronting graffiti at Elwood, in Melbourne's bayside south-east as he walked to his local place of worship.
A painting of a boy with a stick was defaced to feature a red Nazi swastika on his right arm and the numbers 666 on his shirt in reference to the devil. Red paint was also daubed on his lips to resemble a Chucky doll, with 'Child's Play', the title of a 1988 horror film, also tagged on the mural.
The graffiti on Milton Street was spotted on Wednesday by a Jewish man making his way to the Elwood Shule synagogue on Dickens Street, just two blocks away. The Orthodox synagogue is in the same complex as the Erdi Elwood Hebrew School. The Nazi symbol was also painted on a laneway wall less than a kilometre from the Jewish Holocaust Centre.
Elwood and neighbouring Elsternwick have Australia's highest concentration of Jewish people outside Woollahra and Vaucluse in Sydney's eastern suburbs, Census figures show.
Dr Dvir Abramovich, the chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission - a Jewish group, said the vile, anti-Semitic graffiti was clearly designed to intimidate Jewish children.
'Another day, another sickening and chilling incident of swastika vandalism in Melbourne, this time aimed at children walking to school,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Friday.
'I never I thought I'd say this, but this is becoming the norm.' Dr. Abramovich described the graffiti as a reminder that anti-Semitism was on the rise, with Nazi sympathisers keen to 'keep Hitler's torch of hate burning'.
This is not just graffiti on a wall— it is an attack on all of us and on our shared values of trust, freedom and mutual respect,' he said.
'We cannot let our guard down when white-supremacists are walking the streets with malevolent intentions in their heart.
'The vile stampede of neo-Nazi defacement that is appearing with alarming regularity, must be stopped, and we hope that those responsible will be caught and held to account for their evil deeds.'
City of Port Phillip Mayor Dick Gross, who is Jewish, said his council removed the graffiti within four hours of it being reported, with permission sought from the property owner.
'This is disgusting and for me, a Jew, traumatic,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'It is close to a synagogue which has traditionally been the place of worship for Holocaust survivors.
'As a member of the Jewish community, I have provided volunteer security for this synagogue. It is awful.'