San Francisco, CA – Residents living on San Francisco’s 34th Avenue recently received antisemitic hate mail directed at homes located on the same street as a Holocaust memorial in nearby Lincoln Park.
Alex Zhuk received one of the mailings, postmarked May 22. Sent from the “Barnes Review,” the letter espoused virulent Holocaust denialism paired with conspiracy theories about Jews, and enclosed a reading list recommending titles such as “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century” and “Treblinka: Extermination Camp or Transit Camp?”
“It is hoped that you will all buy some of these books in this list and that you will realize that the Holocaust is a complete lie,” the letter said.
Zhuk, a refugee from the former Soviet Union who had known antisemitism in his homeland, said he had experienced anti-Jewish hatred only once in his roughly 25 years in the United States.
“Technically it’s free speech,” he said of the mailing. “But I wanted to alert the community about it.”
He described the full-page single-spaced letter, which was signed “Barnes Review,” as “creepy” and “sad.”
