Anti-Semitic graffiti spotted in downtown Toronto

A Toronto man said he recently spotted two swastikas spray-painted in his Queen StreetEast neighbourhood.

James Breen was heading to his apartment on Saturday morning when he noticed a swastikaon a car in a parking lot near Richmond StreetEast and Ontario Street.

"It stopped me in my tracks when I saw it," Breen, 31, told CBC Toronto.

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The car is no longer in the lot, he added. But Breen said he spotted a second swastika on Monday, painted on a vacant building on Ontario Street.

"It was a reminder for me, certainly, that you can't get complacent about the ongoing struggles with racism in our city and our country," said Breen.

Toronto police saidthey aren't aware of any reports from the public aboutracist or anti-Semitic graffiti in the neighbourhood.

It was a reminder for me, certainly, that you can't get complacent about the ongoing struggles with racism in our city and our country.- James Breen, Toronto resident

Baruch Frydman-Kohl, Senior Rabbi at Toronto's Beth Tzedek Synagogue, said people in his congregation are anxious about racist and anti-Semitic incidents happening across North America.

"It's indicative of a larger breakdown of social civility and of appropriate public discourse, because we're seeing a shift that allows people to say certain things in public and that creates the ground for these kinds of activities," he said.

"The big concern is, of course, a worry that this can spread and in some way infect our society here in Canada."

Frydman-Kohl said Jewish communal institutions are"on alert."

"The Holocaust didn't begin with people being killed," he said. "It began with words that accelerated into hate speech that became amplified into acts of vandalism and then it became large-scale violence."