Erasing Hate: New Yorkers Come Together to Scrub Swastikas off the Subway

The New York subway is bustling with life, lights, and people. All that seemed to come to a screeching halt this weekend when subway riders noticed something horrific -- swastika's etched all over the train's windows and advertisements. 

"The train was silent as everyone stared at each other, uncomfortable and unsure what to do," passenger Gregory Locke wrote in a Facebook post recalling the experience. 

Someone had taken a sharpie to a New York subway to send a message of hatred to Jewish people everywhere. 

The train was in complete silence when someone spoke up saying, "Hand sanitizer gets rid of Sharpie. We need alcohol."

"I've never seen so many people simultaneously reach into their bags and pockets looking for tissues and Purel," Locke said. Within about two minutes, all the Nazi symbolism was gone."

While many would hope the swastika grafitti on a New York subway was just the remnant of yesterday's anti-Semitism, it was not. 

Swastika scrawlings and hate crimes against Jews were committed in multiple U.S. cities this past weekend. 

Chicago police released a surveillance video Saturday showing a man smashing the front window of a synagogue and plastering swastikas on the front door. 

The story isn't much different in Texas. 

Vandals drew a swastika on the base of the school's iconic William Marsh Rice statue in the student quad Friday night. 

Dean John Hutchinson had harsh words for whoever vandalized the statue. 

"I have had it with this behavior ... We are smarter; we are resolute and we outnumber the hatemongers by far," Hutchinson said in the statement.