Above the door of Essex County Hall in Chelmsford, swastikas have been found carved into the stone facade . The building was built in 1939, the year that the Second World War started and the swastikas have been brought to attention by a public passer-by who has asked why the swastikas were put there in the first place, and why they are still there now when it can be seen as offensive to many people who lost relatives in the war.
John Hammond of the Chelmsford Civic Society questioned why the swastikas above the door are only being brought to attention now and why there has been such uproar created, when the symbols have been there for 75 years. He believes it would be “overkill” to remove them.
The swastika symbol has been used for thousands of years, with its first noted usage dating to evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments from the Indus Valley civilisation as well as the Mediterranean Classical Antiquity and paleolithic Europe. It is still widely used today in religion, particularly in India within the Hinduism and Buddhism. Adolf Hitler later adopted the swastika when he came to power in 1933, and it is generally him that the swastika is associated with today as a symbol of Nazism.