Police: Exhibit vandal not anti-Semitic

BRENTWOOD, N.Y., April 25 (UPI) -- The man who allegedly stole and destroyed some Nazi propaganda from a Holocaust exhibit in Brentwood, N.Y., did not have anti-Semitic intentions, police say.

New York Newsday reported Friday that Paul Brajuha, 30, who was arrested Thursday on fourth-degree criminal mischief charges for the incident at Suffolk County Community College.

Police say he may have been trying to rid the display of such items as photographs of the book "Mein Kampf" and a Nazi propaganda poster that caricatured Jews that could be construed as glorifying Nazism, Detective Sgt. Robert Reecks said.

Brajuha, whose mother is Jewish, became so enraged by the way he thought the items portrayed Jews that he went to the campus, removed them and urinated on the pictures, Reecks said.

"He was on a mission to get those two items out of that cabinet," Reecks said. "He did not like the fact that Hitler was being depicted as a hero in this display. ... That's the way, in his mind, he saw it."