WOODINVILLE, WA — A man holding a sign with a swastika advertising conspiracy theories about the Holocaust appeared on a busy street corner in downtown Woodinville on Wednesday night. The incident shocked residents, and incited a range of reactions — from a former Army Ranger trying to reason with the man to a woman who confronted him.

On Wednesday evening, the man was standing at the corner of Northeast 175th Street and 140th Avenue Northeast holding a sign with a swastika and "The Holocaust is a proven hoax" written on it. The other side of the sign named a notorious Holocaust-denier who has served multiple prison sentences in Germany for inciting racial hatred and criminal libel.

At around 7:30 p.m., two men had stopped to talk to the man in an attempt to get him to leave the corner, according to witnesses. At one point, an unidentified woman grabbed the man's sign, folded it in half and stepped on it. The Holocaust-denier didn't get it back.

One of those two men, Tony Brooks, was driving home to Everett from his medical practice in Redmond when he saw the man. Brooks, a former Army Ranger, saw trouble and immediately pulled over to see if he could defuse the situation. "I thought to myself, 'This guy is going to get killed,'" he said, adding that he found the man's message revolting.

Brooks said the man was coherent and passionate about his Holocaust beliefs, but he didn't seem violent. Brooks tried to talk the man into finding a different way to get his point across, at least by getting rid of the swastika. The man told Brooks that he had protested things before, but "wanted to do something a little more extreme." "I said to him, if you're putting something offensive up, you're going to be met with a fist not with someone's open arms," Brooks said.

The man put his sign down while talking to Brooks, and that's when the woman grabbed the sign.

Woodinville resident Patti Mintz drove by the scene several times before deciding to stop. When she pulled over, she met another woman who was inconsolably upset.

"I was pretty freaked out," Mintz, a 14-year Woodinville resident who is Jewish, said. "I've only seen this on TV, movies, and the news. This is the first time I've experienced it."

She called 911, but was told there was nothing police could do. It was a tense scene, Mintz said, because the man was wearing a knife around his neck. She asked him what it was for, and he responded, "occasions like this."

