See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Vanessa Ogle
Brooklyn Daily
A sunny day turned dark when a plane pulling a swastika banner flew over Coney Island, Brighton Beach on July 12.
“It sucked the sun out of the sky,” said Pat Singer, the president of the Brighton Beach Neighborhood Association.
The organization that funded the banner, Pro Swastika, claims on its website it wants to reclaim the hated symbol from the Nazis and restore it’s ancient meaning from Eastern religions, which originally associated the swastika with well-being.
But Brighton Beach residents were skeptical that the best way to do that was to fly the banner — which also featured a swastika in the center of a Star of David — over a neighborhood with a large Jewish population.
“That sign will always be scary and negative and as a Jew, it gave me goose bumps,” said Singer.
The bizarre banner bore a swastika, a peace symbol, and a heart, arranged with mathematical symbols to imply that the Nazi symbol, plus peace, equals love — but Singer wasn’t convinced.
“My sister and I did a double-take,” said Singer. “All of a sudden, we felt the hate.”
Brighton Beach is famously known as “Little Odessa” because of the large influx of Russian immigrants — many of whom were Jews fleeing persecution in the old Soviet Union. Many residents’ lost family members in the Holocaust.
“It must have been a knife going through their hearts,” Nikola Faverman, whose great-grandfather died in a Nazi death camp, said of the banner she saw circle Coney Island several times.
Pro Swastika, which is connected with a New Age website that heavily features alien encounter testimonials, did not respond to calls for comment.