Kaminsky rally protests aerial display of swastikas

Banner with Nazi symbol did not fly over New York on June 25

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State Sen. Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat from Long Beach, took to the boardwalk last Friday to protest the public display of swastikas, saying that a group called the International Raelians had publicly declared that the symbol would be on a banner flown over various parts of the country on June 25.

“We came here today to protest that, to stand up together as Democrats and Republicans, as men and women, as citizens of the South Shore to say that we stand against hate and do not tolerate intolerance,” Kaminsky told reporters.

The group has flown the banner — depicting a swastika within a Star of David — over beaches in Nassau County and Queens in previous years on International Swastika Rehabilitation Day, which fell on June 25 this year, provoking horror and astonishment among beachgoers, Kaminsky said.

He stood with Nassau County Legislator Denise Ford, Long Beach City Manager Jack Schnirman, City Councilwoman Anissa Moore and local rabbis, each of whom expressed outrage at previous aerial displays of the banner and the possibility that it might happen again.

Though the swastika was once a symbol of German nationalism, it was later used by the Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler. Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, of the Temple Israel of Lawrence, said the symbol represents “the architects of modern terrorism.”

“When I see the swastika, I see 1.5 million Jewish children that were murdered by the Nazis 70 years ago,” said Rosenbaum. “… I see the need for people to come to understand that while we are individuals of different faiths, we share the same fate, and as Americans, our fate and our future must be one of love, embracing one another and finding strength in our common heritage. That’s what Long Island is, that’s what America is, that’s who we are.”

But according to Thomas Kaenzig, a Raelian guide and president of the ProSwastika Alliance, the swastika is a religious symbol cherished by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. Kaenzig also asked whether Kaminsky would support banning the Christian cross, citing the crimes committed under the symbol by the Ku Klux Klan.

“While our sympathies, of course, go out to those who suffered under the horrors of the Nazi regime, we should not forget that the Nazis abused a symbol that had existed for thousands of years and only had positive connotations throughout the world, meaning good luck and well-being, among other things,” Kaenzig wrote in a letter to the Herald earlier this month. “By still associating the swastika with the Nazi regime, one only gives credit to them for it, probably the last thing the descendants of those who were murdered by the Nazis would want.”

The banner did not fly over the New York and New Jersey area last Saturday, Kaenzig told the Herald, after the Federal Aviation Administration “put pressure” on the plane operator to refrain from doing so.

Currently, it is a crime in New York state to paint, etch or draw a swastika on real property, but its appearance on a banner flown by a plane falls within a gap in the law, Kaminsky said. The former state assemblyman introduced legislation last year that would ban public displays of swastikas on billboards, in aerial displays or by similar methods that result in “uninvited public viewing.” He has proposed the same measure in Albany, which would make such a display a felony.

“The swastika has no place in our society today,” Kaminsky said. “There is nobody who is going to actually believe that a swastika could be rehabilitated, whatever that means. It stands for one thing: hatred, anti-Semitism and the darkest period in human history, and the fact that someone would throw that in the public’s face is absolutely disgusting.”