Rates of antisemitism have been at an all-time high, but there’s a difference between hearing about vandalism a few states away and seeing it happen in your neighborhood.

In the Aug. 13, 1993, issue of the Jewish Exponent, Staff Writer Steve Feldman reported the vandalism of a car with antisemitic graffiti in a Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood.

“Something happened to Israeli-born Ahuva Veig last week that she said was totally unfamiliar to her,” Feldman wrote. “Veig, who lives near Loretto and Magee Sts. in Oxford Circle, was the victim of anti-semitism. She learned about it in an unusual manner.”

Feldman said that Veig received a call about a truck she was selling asking for the price to be lowered because of the graffiti. Graffiti she had not even known was there.

“Someone phoned her to ask if she would reduce the price on the 1987 four-wheel-drive truck she is selling because it had been spray-painted with a swastika and the name ‘Hitler,’” wrote Feldman.

Veig told Feldman, “I was shocked and astonished. I’m not used to it; it doesn’t happen where I come from. To be hated because of my background is new to me.”

Veig, her husband and her daughter had moved to the United States from Israel in 1981, almost ten years before the incident.

The graffiti on the truck wasn’t all she found.

“Veig discovered additional damage. This time, the side of her house was spray-painted with an unrecognizable mark, apparently with the same white spray paint used on the truck,” the Exponent writer wrote. “The Philadelphia Police Department’s Conflict Prevention and Resolution Unit is investigating the incident.”

mresnicow@midatlanticmedia.com