Crime & Safety
Swastikas Found On Graves At Waukegan Jewish Cemetery In Antisemitic Hate Crime
Vandals defaced dozens of headstones at Am Echod Jewish Cemetery, reportedly writing "Kanye was rite" on one of them.
WAUKEGAN, IL — Police are looking for the perpetrators of an antisemitic hate crime after headstones were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in Waukegan.
Police were called to Am Echod Jewish Cemetary, 3050 Grand Ave., for a report of criminal damage.
Officers found nearly 40 headstones had been defaced with red spray paint, with swastikas drawn on more than a dozen of them, according to police.
Find out what's happening in Lake Forest-Lake Blufffor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor said in a statement that she was disturbed and angered by the discovery.
"Hate does not have a home in Waukegan; when such incidents occur, our marginalized neighbors are victimized, and our entire community suffers," Taylor said.
Find out what's happening in Lake Forest-Lake Blufffor free with the latest updates from Patch.
"I hope our officers promptly locate the perpetrators of this despicable act and hold them accountable," she said, "and I offer my full support to those directly impacted by this vandalism."
On one of the headstones, a vandal wrote the message "Kanye was rite," according to video of the cemetery aired by WFLD.
The Chicago-born rapper, who now identifies as "Ye," has recently taken to amplifying antisemitic tropes and messages. Similar messages appeared last month in Los Angeles and in Jacksonville, Florida.
Between 2020 and 2021, the number of reported antisemitic incidents in Illinois rose 15 percent to 209, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which attributed some of the uptick to last year's Israeli-Palestinian armed conflict.
Nationwide, swastikas were involved in more than 67 percent of the 850 reported incidents of antisemitic vandalism, according to the ADL.
David Goldenberg, the regional director of ADL Midwest, said he found the recent normalization of antisemitism to be extremely worrying.
"We have to remember that this is a fringe element of our society, and we far outnumber them," Goldenberg told WLS. "So we got to be smarter than them. We have to be just as aggressive as them and we got to be louder than that. And that's how you fight back."
Anyone with information about the antisemitic vandalism at Am Echod was asked to contact the Waukegan Police Department.
Related: Kanye West's Antisemitism Dangerous If Unchecked, Holocaust Museum Warns
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
