Federal prosecutors in Georgia announced on Thursday that a neo-Nazi was convicted of hate crimes earlier in the month after he sent threatening, antisemitic postcards to a local rabbi and the state’s lone Jewish representative.
Ariel Collazo Ramos, 32, of High Point, N.C., was found guilty of a count of mailing threatening communications with a hate-crime enhancement after he sent messages, including “Jews are rats,” to Rabbi Elizabeth Bahar and Esther Panitch, a Georgia state representative.
“Is there a child rape, torture and murder tunnel under your house? We have the Zyklon B,” Ramos stated in a handwritten note, referring to the cyanide-based poison that the Nazis used at Auschwitz and other death camps.
“Use code ‘gasthejews’ for 10% off,” he added.
The Justice Department noted that family members of both Bahar and Panitch were murdered using Zyklon B during the Holocaust. Bahar and Panitch each received the same message from Ramos.
Ramos wasn’t exercising his free speech when he sent the antisemitic postcards to the two, according to William Keyes, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia.
“This neo-Nazi delivered a true threat to life and liberty,” Keyes stated. “Antisemitic threats and all threats made against the federally protected freedoms of our citizens will not be tolerated in the Middle District of Georgia.”
Panitch offered her “profound thanks” for the verdict on Thursday.
“On Nov. 4, a federal jury convicted the neo-Nazi who sent antisemitic death threats to Rabbi Elizabeth Bahar and me after we advocated for Georgia’s first legislation defining antisemitism,” she stated. “The threatening postcards arrived at our homes—mine on the morning the bill was signed into law—and referenced gas chambers and the Holocaust, evoking the murder of our own family members.
The lawmaker offered her “deepest gratitude” to Keyes and his colleagues at the Justice Department and the FBI for “their commitment to prosecuting this case.”
“They took these threats seriously. They understood that this wasn’t free speech. It was a true threat designed to terrorize and silence Jewish women for our advocacy,” she said. “This prosecution matters.”
Panitch added that she would “never back down from a threat against me or any other minority.”
“When hate tries to silence us, when violence attempts to intimidate us, we must stand even stronger together,” she said. “That is my commitment to every community facing persecution and discrimination.”
Ramos sent the postcards to Bahar after she testified in favor of Georgia House Bill 30, sponsored by Panitch, which adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism to define Jew-hatred in state law.
Both Panitch and Bahar testified at trial that they had to take additional safety measures after receiving the threatening messages from Ramos.
Ramos faces a maximum of five years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine. Federal convictions are not eligible for parole. Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 8.
