Roxbury man charged with damaging Holocaust Memorial in Boston
A Roxbury man may face civil rights charges after he allegedly used a large rock to destroy a pane of glass at the New England Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston. The pane was etched with numbers tattooed onto the arms of Jews murdered in Nazi death camps.
James Isaac, 21, was arrested by Boston police around 1:50 a.m. Wednesday after a witness allegedly saw him damage the memorial, which is located on Union Street across from both Boston City Hall and the John F. Kennedy federal building, Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans said.
Isaac is currently charged with willful and malicious destruction of personal property and willfull and malicious destruction of a place of a monument and is scheduled to be arraigned on Wednesday in Boston Municipal Court, according to Evans.
Isaac may face civil rights charges based on the charge of destruction of a monument, officials said.
The memorial features six chimney-like glass towers, built with 132 panes of glass etched with numbers tattooed onto the arms of Jews murdered in Nazi death camps. The towers symbolize the estimated six million Jews murdered in six death camps during World War II. The memorial opened in 1995.
Yellow police tape and traffic cones were used to restrict the area where the thick, heavy glass had fallen to the ground. The memorial, designed by architect Stanley Saitowitz, allows visitors to pass underneath the six towers on a dark granite walkway.
The memorial is open to the public 24 hours a day. Each tower has 22 individual panes of glass and each pane is inscribed with 17,280 unique numbers, according to the memorial’s website.
