Vandals hit a Jewish Cemetery in Rochester this week, but managers at the Stone Road Cemetery, or Waad Hakolel, don’t want to link the incident with large-scale attacks on Jewish cemeteries in St. Louis and Philadelphia in recent days.
Governor Cuomo and State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman do make that connection. The governor has ordered State Police to investigate the incident.
More than a dozen headstones were knocked down on Stone Road, similar to an attack in 2014 on the Britton road Cemetery in Greece that damaged about 40 grave markers. Greece Police believed at the time that was hooliganism, not intended as a hate crime. Chief Patrick Phelan says they’re now giving the cemetery extra attention on their patrols.
Members of Rochester’s Islamic community came and volunteered their services to help put the cemetery back to rights.