Anti-Semitic flyers turned over to authorities

Three anti-Semitic flyers were found and reported to Birmingham police on Thursday, July 4, who later turned them over to Michigan State Police and the FBI for further investigation.

Commander Scott Grewe of the Birmingham Police Department said they received a call the morning of July 4 that there was a sign on the front entrance of Clover Hill Park Cemetery, 2425 E. Fourteen Mile Road, which said at the top, “Six million kikes?” followed by a cartoon picture of a German soldier skull head. Below it read, “Is that a challenge?” with a swastika.

Later that day, two more similar flyers were found in Birmingham's Poppleton Park neighborhood, Grewe said, with residents reporting them to police.

The two flyers found in Poppleton Park “had more swastikas and depictions of German soldiers, one with rifles, and one with a soldier holding a noose,” Grewe said. “It was a whole bunch of nonsense.”

All three flyers were attributed to the group Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi terrorist network formed in the United States in 2015. It has since expanded its network into the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and the Baltic states. Atomwaffen means “atomic weapons” in German.

According to the New York Times, it is a tiny paramilitary neo-Nazi group that has been linked to at least five killings in the United States, and is among the most violent groups of the far-right.

Grewe said Birmingham police turned the investigation over to Michigan Intelligence Operations Center (MIOC), a division of Michigan State Police, which monitors these situations, as well as the FBI.

“Both MIOC and the FBI, they're familiar with this group,” Grewe said. “For a local police department, our concern is, is this group active, are they planning some kind of event or doing something. Both MIOC and the FBI, their intel did not indicate they're planning any kind of rally or event.”