On Saturday evening, New Yorker Gregory Locke boarded a 1 train headed toward 72nd Street where, he says, he and his fellow riders found “a swastika on every advertisement and every window.” Locke took several photos of the scene — including one of a subway map with “Jews belong in the oven” scrawled over it — and posted them on Facebook, where they have already been shared more than 200,000 times in just over 12 hours.
While the anti-Semitic vandalism is unconscionable in its own right, the thing that seems to be drawing people to Locke’s post is the way the riders on the train reacted once seeing the swastikas. At first, Locke says the train was “silent,” but that people around him quickly sprang into action. “One guy got up and said, ‘Hand sanitizer gets rid of Sharpie. We need alcohol.’ He found some tissues and got to work,” Locke wrote in his post. “I’ve never seen so many people simultaneously reach into their bags and pockets looking for tissues and Purel. Within about two minutes, all the Nazi symbolism was gone.” Select All has reached out to Locke for more details on the alleged incident and will update this post if we hear back.
Locke’s Facebook post even gained Chelsea Clinton’s attention. Clinton tweeted a screenshot of the post early on Sunday morning.
New Yorkers: united in cleanliness and the fight against hate.
