Reports of anti-Semitic flyers near Atlanta deemed a ‘misunderstanding’

JTA — Reports that flyers described by police as anti-Semitic were found in a Georgia county with a large Jewish population were the product of a misunderstanding, local media reported.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported late Tuesday night that while one anti-Muslim flyer had been placed on a car in the largely Jewish Toco Hills neighborhood of DeKalb County last month, reports that anti-Semitic flyers had been discovered were erroneous.

The newspaper reported that Dov Wilker, the Atlanta regional director of the American Jewish Committee, said the misunderstanding stemmed from a “historical document” bearing swastikas and anti-Semitic language that a local resident was using to study the history of anti-Semitism.

In a statement published Tuesday evening on the website of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Wilker said: “Upon further investigation we have determined conclusively that the offensive antisemitic flyer with swastikas and holocaust denial language is a historical document, which was being used by a member of the Jewish community who was studying the history of antisemitism and holocaust denial. Another member of the Jewish community saw the document and mistakenly sent it on to others thinking it was linked to the distribution of the anti-Muslim flyer (determined to be a legitimate Islamophobic incident), upon which the story regrettably took on a life of its own.”

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency had reported earlier Tuesday on local reports on the flyer scare.

The anti-Muslim flyer had been placed on the car of a Jewish resident of Toco Hills, Wilker told the Journal-Constitution.