Arizona vandals turn family's giant hanukkia into swastika

One family woke up to a Hanukka surprise when vandals turned their 7-foot-tall, PVC pipe hanukkia into a swastika.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Updated: DECEMBER 31, 2016 17:03
Hanukka (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Hanukka
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
When Naomi and Seth Ellis' children asked for their own festive lights for the holiday season her husband went to work, building a hanukkia out of PVC pipes, setting it up in the yard of their Chandler, Arizona home.
What they found early Friday morning, instead of a 7-foot-tall hanukkia, was a newly formed swastika, The Washington Post reported.
Early Friday officers responded to a call that the families hanukkia had been vandalized.
Following an initial report, the officer that responded helped the family to take down the swastika.

“We talk a lot about the importance of equality and tolerance, loving everybody no matter what,” Naomi Ellis explained.
Ellis stated that she explained to her children that not everyone learns about the same things.
"Some people are ignorant, and this is what they do.”
Before the incident, despite learning about the Holocaust and Nazis, the Ellis' three children, aged 5, 7, and 9, had never seen the Nazi party's symbol.
Naomi stated, “this is the real reality that we live in: People hate us for no reason or want us to feel scared for who we are."

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"That’s not something I wanted to have to tell them."
Seth rebuilt the hanukkia Friday afternoon.
The family invited the community to light the hanukkia together, Friday night.