About 100 demonstrators held a peaceful march for tolerance just days after vandals set at least three cars on fire and scrawled Nazi and other anti-Semitic symbols in a Brooklyn Jewish neighborhood.
"KKK" was written on the side of a red van, the police said, and swastikas and anti-Semitic slurs were scrawled on benches.
"The violence adds a sickening dimension to this type of anti-Semitism," said New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who lives two blocks away.
Hikind said that this area of Brooklyn, including Midwood and Borough Park, contains one of the largest concentrations of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel.
The New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force is involved in the investigation.
"The fact that this most recent attack came on the heels of the 73rd anniversary of Kristalnacht may or may not be a coincidence," the city’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement.
The Kristllnacht marked the start of a violent pogrom against Jewish populations in Nazi Germany when synagogues, businesses and houses were torched or destroyed.
"Either way, this kind of hateful act has no place in the freest city in the freest country in the world," Bloomberg added.
The Brooklyn incident comes on the heels of a recent nationwide survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which found that 15% of the country population holds deeply anti-Semitic views.
The ADL tallied 133 anti-Semitic incidents citywide last year — with 50 of them in Brooklyn.