New Yorkers take action after noticing anti-semitic grafitti scrawled on subway car

When a group of New York City subway passengers stepped onto their train Saturday, they noticed something out of the ordinary. Scrawled onto the walls and windows of their subway car with Sharpie markers were graffiti images of swastikas and anti-semitic phrases such as "Destroy Israel. Heil Hitler," WNBC-TV reported.

"The train was silent as everyone stared at each other, uncomfortable and unsure what to do," Gregory Locke, one passenger who was on the train, wrote Saturday on his personal Facebook page. Locke is an attorney who now lives in New York but is originally from Atlanta, CNN reported.

However, one passenger on the train wasn't about to ignore the messages and just let them go.

"One guy got up and said, 'Hand sanitizer gets rid of Sharpie. We need alcohol,'" Locke wrote. That passenger, according to CNN, was Jared Nied, who works as a chef at a Manhattan restaurant.

Other passengers dipped into their belongings in search of anything that might help scrub the anti-semitic references, from hand sanitizer to tissues, and "within about two minutes, all the Nazi symbolism was gone," Locke wrote.

"We all just sat back down, glanced at each other, and went about our ride much happier," Nied told CNN.

Locke said there were at least 20 anti-semitic references in total on that subway car. He said he couldn't tell if there were similar markings inside other cars, WNBC reported.

"It was very uplifting to see everyone come together like that," Locke said, according to CNN.

The New York Police Department said it was investigating the incident as a possible "bias-motivated" act. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the New York City subway system, said no formal complaint was filed.

Authorities had not identified a possible suspect as of Sunday morning. The NYPD did not immediately to TheBlaze Monday when asked for an update.

New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted about a separate incident Sunday. His tweet included a picture of a four boxes, each with one letter of the word "love" inside of it. The boxes had clearly been drawn in from an image of a swastika.

"This is what New Yorkers do — we turn hate into love. And we wont back down — not now, not ever. #TurnHateIntoLove," Cuomo tweeted.

The incidents come amid a recent wave of anti-semitic crimes across the country. As TheBlaze previously reported, at least 27 Jewish community centers in 17 states fell victim in the last few weeks to phone-in bomb threats that all turned out to be false alarms.