Time to remove the swastikas at IU

Indiana University is home to thousands of Jewish students, hundreds of servicemen and women, and a plethora of students who have relatives that served in World War II.

It is also home to obscene swastikas.

The offending symbol adorns some tiles in the Wildermuth Intramural Center.

This is a problem.

Earlier this month, world famous soccer club Manchester United took heat because its brochure to fans featured a swastika-like symbol and the title “New Order.”

Instead of complaining about semantics or arguing over the discrepancy, the soccer club properly issued a formal and sincere apology.

They quickly issued new non-offensive brochures.

Indiana University can learn a lot from this act.

Our university must quickly and effectively remove the swastika tiles in the Wildermuth Intramural Center.  

In the Wildermuth’s defense, it was constructed before Nazi Germany existed and the swastika at that time was a virtuous symbol in the Hindu religion.

The Hindu symbol, which meant “all is well,” was a popular design, featured in early 20th century architecture, thus the reason one can surmise that it was incorporated into the making of the Wildermuth.

Unfortunately, since the center was built, a major world war took place in which our enemy took the Hindu symbol and used it as a platform to breed anti-Semitic hatred in order to fuel a hateful, war-mongering country.

During World War II, which was caused by Nazi aggression, millions of innocent Jews were brutally slaughtered in various concentration camps.

The swastika was one of the last symbols many Jewish men, women and children would see before they were violently murdered.

But the symbol isn’t only offensive to Jews.

Along with the mass genocide, many brave American servicemen lost their lives in the European theater against enemy combatants of Nazi Germany and their proudly displayed swastikas.

It is naiveté to believe in the notion that the swastikas displayed in the Wildermuth are in any way acceptable because of their prior meaning.

A symbol is defined in laymen’s terms as an object that stands for something.

Many symbols Americans have become accustomed to once stood for something else.

The peace symbol, for instance, was intended by its creator to display a stick figure slumped over in a chair.

It was a representation of a human being in despair.

However, that symbol was taken and used in a different context that we now associate with hope and peace.

For hundreds of Indiana University students who walk past the tiles in Wildermuth each day, these swastika-emblazoned tiles don’t mean “all is well.”

They mean the opposite.

Whatever previous meaning it once had is now moot.

We cannot undo the atrocities committed by the Nazis, but we can prevent hateful symbols displayed on our very own campus.

I am asking for the Indiana University administration to immediately remove the tiled symbols.

— eygoldar@indiana.edu