Image: Lox in a Box/Instagram
The owners of a Jewish bagel shop in Paddington have found a swastika etched into their hand painted windows only weeks before opening.
Police received a report of malicious damage at Lox in a Box, on Oxford Street in Paddington, about 12pm Thursday, after the graffiti was discovered on Saturday 21.
The shop’s windows had been covered with brown paper while the building was being painted, with owner Candy Berger saying she didn’t even know the swastika was there until she removed the coverings.
“Yesterday, we proudly took the paper down,” she wrote in a post on Instagram. “And today, we wanted to cover it all up again.
“I stood there in shock, thinking about what that symbol represents. What it has meant to my people. What it has cost us, generation after generation. I am the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, and today felt like a punch that landed deeper than most.”
Set to open on April 9, Lox in a Box Paddington joined other sites in Marrickville, Bondi and Coogee, with the stores previously receiving harassment online in the wake of the Bondi terror attack.
Berger shared screenshots of one-star reviews across the stores at the time, writing that “posting negative antisemitic reviews can really harm a small business like ours.”
It comes just months after another Jewish bakery in the area, Avners, closed, with owner Ed Halmagyi citing harassment from the moment they opened, including numerous break-ins, glue in door locks, and even human faeces thrown at the bakery’s windows.
“After two years of almost ceaseless antisemitic harassment, vandalism and intimidation directed at our little bakery, we have to be realistic about the threats that exist going forwards. Those concerns are now clearly more pressing and more serious,” a statement hung in the shop window read.
“As an open and very public business that operates at all hours, we are unable to ensure the safety of our staff, our customers, our families.”
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