Several cars in Den Bosch were defaced with swastikas on Sunday night. Unknown people applied the swastikas to the cars with spray cans. A swastika was also placed on a wall. “I cannot go to my customers with these swastikas on my van. What if they see this. You cannot drive around with these,” said victim Sjors van den Akker (79). “I’m going straight to the garage.”
Van den Akker was born during the war. He knows all too well what a swastika means. “I read in the media that a swastika has also been placed at a Jewish synagogue in Middelburg. These are strange times. I now have to get it off again,” said Sjors about the white swastika that was graffitied on the right side of his black van is spray painted.
It concerns four or five cars that were parked in an inlet in the Rijnstraat, the only part in the area where a parking permit is not required. “I park here regularly. There have never been any problems before. Maybe they were young people returning from a carnival party,” he thinks out loud about the perpetrators.
“Keep your hands off other people’s things.”
“It is strange and disappointing that you are confronted with racism in this way. Do this where you live. Stay away from other people’s things,” he says to the unknown perpetrators.
The police say that no reports have been received yet. “We did receive a report from a neighborhood manager. A wall of a housing association building has also been defaced. We will discuss this with the local police officer and the housing association. But as long as there are no reports, we will not conduct an investigation.”
Sjors van den Akker is shocked by the swastika on his car: