NEW YORK — Hand sanitizer doesn’t just remove bacteria, it also can remove racist graffiti.
It’s what a group of people riding a subway train Saturday evening in New York City used to quickly remove some anti-Semitic graffiti that had been scrawled with a marker inside one of the cars.
Gregory Locke, 27, an attorney from Harlem, tells NBC News that swastikas and slogans such as “Destroy Israel” and “Jews belong in the oven” were written on every window, door and advertisement in their subway car.
Locke wrote about the incident on his Facebook page, saying passengers initially were unsure what to do.
He said a passenger said hand sanitizer would remove the graffiti.
“I’ve never seen so many people simultaneously reach into their bags and pockets looking for tissues and Purell,” Locke writes. “Within about two minutes, all the Nazi symbolism was gone.”
Locke’s story has gone viral, with more than 425,000 shares and more than 642,000 likes and other reactions on Facebook.
“This is what New Yorkers do — we turn hate into love,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement about the incident, the New York Post reports. “That is our message to the nation and to the world. And we won’t back down. Not now, not ever.”
The graffiti has been reported to the New York City police, which is investigating it as a possible hate crime, Reuters reports.
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