Immigrants’ Home Burned in Apparent Hate Crime

Oct. 24, 1960: Vandals set fire to the Baldwin Park home of the Jaskolsky family and paint a swastika and the words “Notzi Rat” on a cinder-block wall in the backyard. German immigrants Ewald Jaskolsky, 25, his wife, Wilhelmine , 20, and their two young children had spent the night at the home of friends and returned to find their house destroyed. Wilhelmine says: "The words on the wall hurt more than the loss of our home. We've done nothing to anyone. We were just children during the war." The Jakolskys' plight has brought an outpouring of support from Ewald’s co-workers at Beckman Instruments Co., as well as help from friends and strangers, and although the family plans to leave Baldwin Park they are grateful for the aid they have received. "People have been so wonderful to us it has made us more determined than ever to become American citizens," Wilhelmine says. "They've made us feel like one of them -- like we're not foreigners anymore."

4601 N. Merced Ave. via Google maps’ street view.

Comments

[Mary mallory]

Could the arsonists have been some of the same people who protested Caligari? What happened to the family? I hope they became American citizens and everything worked out okay for them.