UNITED STATES, February 9, 2017 (Religion News Service by Kimberly Winston): In one weekend, the swastika appeared in public places in three U.S. cities — Houston, Chicago and New York. The sight was so offensive, average New Yorkers pulled out hand sanitizer and tissues to wipe the graffiti from the walls of the subway where it had been scrawled. “Within about two minutes, all the Nazi symbolism was gone,” one subway rider who was there said. He added, “Everyone kind of just did their jobs of being decent human beings.”
That two-minute incident on a northbound No. 1 train underneath Manhattan is a blip in the swastika’s 6,000-year history. The plus-sign symbol with four hooked arms all pointing either clockwise or counterclockwise appeared in Asian, African, North and South American cultures millennia before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis made the clockwise version of it the emblem of their aggression for 25 years.
Yet the Nazis’ brief but horrendous association with the swastika managed to divorce the symbol from its original ties to religion and spirituality, at least for Western cultures, though it is still used and revered by Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and others. How did the swastika travel from prehistorical India to a New York City subway last week? Can it ever be restored to its original place as a sign of fertility, good fortune and hope?
More of the swastikas’ history at “source” above as well as an video by Steven Heller, a graphic designer who teaches at New York State School of Visual Arts.