A swastika has been found etched into the window of a Sydney Jewish bagel and sandwich shop weeks before its opening, prompting police investigations.

Police received a report of malicious damage at Lox in a Box, on Oxford Street in Paddington, about 12pm Thursday.

Inquiries established that the incident occurred on Saturday 21 March, a spokesperson said. The shop windows had been covered with brown paper after painting, and business owner Candy Berger said she did not discover the Nazi symbol until she removed the covering earlier this week.

“Today we wanted to cover it all up again,” she wrote in an Instagram post.

“I stood there in shock, thinking about what that symbol represents. What it has meant to my people … I am the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, and today felt like a punch that landed deeper than most.

Lox in a Box was founded in Bondi and has sites in Coogee and Marrickville. The business had been painting and renovating the Paddington site ahead of its opening on 9 April.

The etching is the latest in a string of alleged antisemitic incidents in Sydney’s east in the wake of the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 and Israel’s war in Gaza.

Cars had been set alight and houses vandalised in the area, which is home to many Jewish Australians, before the terrorist shooting that killed 15 at a Bondi beach Hanukah event in December.

Another popular Jewish baker, Avner’s in Surry Hills, closed permanently after the terror attack, with a message posted on the shop’s window saying it could no longer ensure the safety of its staff and customers.

“In the wake of the pogrom at Bondi one thing has become clear – it is no longer possible to make outwardly, publicly, proudly Jewish places and events safe in Australia,” the message read.

Celebrity chef Ed Halmagyi, who ran the bakery, said at the time the business had faced two years of “almost ceaseless antisemitic harassment, vandalism and intimidation”.

Lox in a Box shut its Bondi, Coogee and Marrickville stores on the day after the Bondi shooting. Berger said at the time the business had been bombarded with one-star reviews in subsequent days, accusing the reviewers of antisemitism.

“This is what I woke to in my inbox,” she wrote on Instagram at the time.

“It’s so disheartening, where’s our collective humanity? Antisemitism is not a joke … posting negative antisemitic reviews can really harm a small business like ours.”

In the wake of Saturday’s alleged vandalism, Berger praised the efforts of police and the Community Security Group, a Jewish organisation. She suggested the timing was “calculated, just as we prepare for Passover, a time where we remember that the Jewish people have been marked before”.

“We will not let this break us,” she wrote on Instagram. “We will not let it close our doors or dim the light of something we’ve worked so hard to build.”