Jewish motorists driving through Oregon were shocked to see anti-Semitic signs hanging from highway overpasses this weekend, telling a local newspaper that they could not believe that they still had "to face this vicious anti-Semitism in such a public place in 2017.”
Speaking with the Willamette Week, Beth Dershowitz described the signs, which stated “UNJEW HUMANITY” and “Jewish financing available,” only one week after a white supremacist plowed a car into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters during a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
"We witnessed two seemingly coordinated displays of hate on overpasses yesterday heading north,” she said. "The first was somewhere south of Eugene…. We were shaken but continued out of the rural area. Then I saw another near Salem, and my husband pulled to the shoulder to get a picture. My husband wanted to confront the men behind this, but I was afraid for our children in the car with us. Just another day in Trump's America.”
The Oregon Department of Transportation stated that it was in the process of removing the signs, which it said had been placed on the overpasses without permission.
During last week’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, far-right protesters gathered near the nearby synagogue, causing intense concern among the local Jewish community.
Writing on the website of the Reform Movement, Alan Zimmerman, president of the Beth Israel synagogue, described the fear his congregants felt as armed members of the far right stood watch across the street during Shabbat prayers, screaming anti-Semitic slogans.
As the congregation prayed, several groups of men passed the building carrying flags and “other Nazi symbols,” shouting “there's the synagogue!” and chanting “Seig Heil.”
"A guy in a white polo shirt walked by the synagogue a few times, arousing suspicion,” Zimmerman wrote.
"Was he casing the building, or trying to build up courage to commit a crime? We didn’t know. Later, I noticed that the man accused in the automobile terror attack wore the same polo shirt as the man who kept walking by our synagogue; apparently it’s the uniform of a white supremacist group. Even now, that gives me a chill.”
"Soon, we learned that Nazi websites had posted a call to burn our synagogue. I sat with one of our rabbis and wondered whether we should go back to the temple to protect the building. What could I do if I were there? Fortunately, it was just talk – but we had already deemed such an attack within the realm of possibilities, taking the precautionary step of removing our Torahs, including a Holocaust scroll, from the premises.”
