Jewish couple gets "gold star" and promise of "mayhem" for hanging BLM banner

ROCKVILLE, Md. (WJLA) - Rockville City Police say they are investigating a hate crime after someone left an anti-Semitic letter and egged the car belonging to a couple that had hung a Black Lives Matter banner.

The couple believes the letter was left sometime in the early morning hours Saturday. Someone had also toilet-papered the area outside their apartment on Azalea Drive in the Regents Square neighborhood.

The writer spends most of the letter criticizing Black Lives Matter, but then ends with the line:

“Your lack of care and racism is very annoying and disgraceful and for this we would like to award you a gold star. Enjoy the mayhem.”

The letter then includes a drawing of a yellow Star of David and the German word “Jude,” which means Jew. Jewish people living under the Nazis during the World War II era were supposed to wear similar stars with “Jude” written on them to identify themselves as Jewish.

The letter was left on the car of Mikey Franklin, who tweeted out a picture of it.

Both he and his wife, Sonya Shpilyuk, are Jewish. Shpilyuk was born in what was then the Soviet Union and says her family left Ukraine when she was 9 to get away from anti-Semitism.

“We came to this country with the promise that this doesn’t happen here, that you can say whatever you want,” Shpilyuk said.