The first time I saw a Swastika outside of the movies or a history course, I was just coming back from gym class. It was drawn on a torn sheet of loose-leaf in black pen, creased in the middle and balanced on my backpack like a feather. I recall staring at it for a long time, making sure the right angles were pointing in the right direction. Then the bell rang, and my fingers quickly tore up the paper before jetting into my next class.

I was one of two and a half Jewish kids in my middle school if you counted a boy whose father was Jewish but didn’t celebrate any of the holidays. This often felt incredibly isolating, even though most of us had been lumped together in a K-12 community since we were children. Perhaps this was what kept me from sharing the experience, the idea that I knew much of the class so personally that I believed it was impossible that they would indulge in a hate crime. Besides, being twelve often consisted of really wanting to have good friends and I was not about to jeopardize that over one silly symbol on one sheet of paper. The next part seemed to happen overnight.

Students drew them in the covers of old textbooks in history class that was handed out when we did our readings. It was in my backpack daily, and on my folders when I would excuse myself from class to go to the bathroom. Eventually, I ran out of stickers to cover them with, and inevitably I would get angry. I thought the two days we’d spent on the World War II unit would help them understand. I assumed sharing our content in English would send enough of a message, even if I substituted those involved with aliens or animals in my stories. When I finally worked up the nerve to show a teacher how the textbooks had been vandalized, she turned them into windows. I was outraged. In four strokes, she had managed to take two years of pain and pretend like it never happened. In my Spanish class the ring leader of the group told me pointedly he hated every Jew but Jesus, right before pointedly asking our teacher how to say that someone was Jewish. Eventually, the effect of learning curse words in junior high made for an effortless combination: puta judía, Jewish whore.

I felt myself go numb. I assumed a protective quality towards my parents when sharing, refusing to tell them because I felt they had enough to worry about. I wore a necklace every single day with the star of David. I wrote entries to share in English class where I replaced the members of the hate group with other creatures and choosing to share anyway. It was the first time I had a passion for standing up for something of my own volition. Even coming from someone who is not religious, this sense of pride has become inherent to who I am. It’s that passion that has motivated me to share my story with you, without which I am sure I would be incomplete.