Police investigating 'Hitler is coming' note found on Jewish children's museum

Elise Solé
Updated

After a Post-It note that “Hitler is coming” was left at a Jewish children’s museum, the governor of New York has directed police to investigate the incident as a hate crime.

The green note with the anti-Semitic warning was found Thursday on a billboard at the Jewish Children’s Museum in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights. The display, titled “Transform the World,” is for kids to pin their aspirations.

Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, a social media editor for the Chabad website tweeted, “This is just awful,” attaching photos of the wall and the note. “An interactive sign in front of the the Jewish Children's Museum in Crown Heights asking people how they would transform the world was defaced with Antisemitic graffiti!”

Det. Denise Moroney, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department, confirmed the details to Yahoo Lifestyle, adding, “This remains an ongoing investigating.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo asked the New York State Police’s Hate Crimes Taskforce to investigate.

"I am disgusted by the anti-Semitic message scrawled in front of the Jewish Children's Museum in Crown Heights, Brooklyn,” Cuomo wrote on his website. “We have zero tolerance for anti-Semitism, discrimination or hate of any kind in New York, and no person should ever feel threatened because of their religious beliefs…In the wake of a rise in anti-Semitic and other hate crimes in our nation, it is more important than ever that we stand united to condemn these despicable acts of violence and root out hate in all its forms.”

The museum is dedicated to 16-year-old Ari Halberstam, who in 1994 was shot in the head by a Lebanese terrorist while driving across the Brooklyn Bridge. According to the New York Times, Ari and a group of his peers wearing Hasidic clothing, were returning from a Manhattan hospital where they visited a rabbi. Four passengers were injured from the shooting, and Ari died.

Shooter Rashid Baz was sentenced to 141 years in prison for the murder.

Ari’s mother Devorah Halberstam co-founded the Brooklyn Jewish Children’s Museum in 2005 as a safe place for children. “I was a typical soccer mom before Ari died — I knew little about guns and hatred,” she tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

Devorah worked alongside police and the FBI to change Baz’s crime, initially classified as road rage into a terrorism charge. Baz later admitted to targeting the van because its passengers were Jewish, according to the New York Post.

The Post-It note is the third attack on Devorah’s museum. “This act is the antithesis of what we stand for,” she tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “The perpetrator ran away because he knows what he did was deplorable...there’s nothing more vile and than attacking an institution for children.”

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