Vandals painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slurs at a Jewish cemetery in Rhode Island and in the office of a Jewish student organization in New York one day after a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht. ``I can't even find the word for it, it's so hurtful,'' James Oppenheim, president of the Jewish Student Union at the State University of New York at Binghamton, N.Y., said Thursday. There was no sign of forced entry at the office and sanctuary in the basement of the student union, Oppenheim said. The group has about 200 students that coordinate activities on the campus, which has about 5,000 Jewish students. ``I think it's politically motivated because they didn't do any damage that we can see,'' Oppenheim said. Police were taking fingerprints in the rooms but had no suspects, said Raymond Dye, vice president of student affairs. On Wednesday night the Jewish group sponsored a candlelight vigil to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night the Nazis began their first organized assaults against the Jews in Germany and Austria. In Woonsocket, R.I., vandals painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans at a 95-year-old Jewish cemetery, but police were uncertain whether the attack was related to Kristallnacht observances. A woman visiting B'nai Israel Cemetery Tuesday found her son's headstone among the approximately half-dozen covered with swastikas and other Nazi symbols. The main road to the cemetery also had been inscribed with anti-Jewish slogans and the German word for Jew, ``Juden.'' ``Today when I went to the cemetery, it was a very terrible reminder of things that have happened to us in the past,'' Temple B'nai Israel President Edith Wittes told those assembled for a Kristallnacht memorial service. In addition to the Nazi symbols, there were other images with possible links to Satanic worship, such as skulls and an inverted cross with its arms turned down. ``The sickness that made Adolf Hitler possible is alive and well today, in our own community,'' said Rabbi Joel Chernikoff.
