Birmingham resident Alicia Chandler was upset when she heard that anti-Semitic flyers were appearing in her hometown as well as in Royal Oak.

Most disturbing, she said, was that one was found at the entrance to Clover Hill Cemetery, a traditionally Jewish cemetery where many Holocaust survivors are buried.

Chandler, the interim executive director for the Jewish Community Relations Council/AJC (American Jewish Committee), is the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor.

“It is incredibly disturbing and scary to see these sentiments on the rise in our country and also to be appearing in our hometown where parts of the Jewish community live," Chandler said. "We do feel targeted,"

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The flyers are attributed to the Atomwaffen Division (AWD), a national neo-Nazi network that has been labeled as a terrorist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The messages on the flyers, found in two locations in Birmingham and one in Royal Oak, are disturbing.

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Three different flyers were found, all with distinct, vivid messages taking aim directly at Jewish people. One flyer uses a derogatory term for Jews in a headline that references the 6 million victims of Nazi genocide during World War II, then denies the Holocaust ever happened, but said it should have.

"When Holocaust denials are being placed on the gates of a cemetery where Holocaust survivors are buried there’s a sadness to that," Chandler said. "There’s also a danger to what we feel that these sentiments are on the rise in this country.“

Chandler noted that the flyers " ... appear to deny the Holocaust while simultaneously saying it would be a good idea to kill 6 million Jews."

Kim Raznik, executive director of Clover Hill Cemetery on 14 Mile in Birmingham, said the flyer was found by their superintendent, Richard Straitz, on July 4.

Raznik said they immediately filed a police report.

“We take these things seriously and we reported to the officials,” Raznik said. “I think it’s a concerning topic for the entire nation.”

Scott Grewe, patrol commander with the Birmingham Police Department, said two flyers were found in Birmingham’s Poppleton Park. The residents who found them took them down and turned them in to police.

The poster found at the cemetery “was stuck with duct tape underneath the Jewish Star of David on a cement column near the front gate,” he said.

Grewe said his department reached out to the Michigan Intelligence Operation Center, a branch of the state police, and learned that MIOC is aware of the group, "but they are not aware of any planned activity or specific event that we need to be concerned with at this specific time."

In Royal Oak, a flyer was found on a light pole near 14 Mile and Hampton, near the Birmingham border, according to Royal Oak Police Lt. Keith Spencer.

“Right now, we will continue to monitor the area and any further incidents,” Spencer said. “At this time we haven’t found that there is an imminent threat to violence.”

More:Anti-Semitic flyers appear outside Ferndale church

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that monitors and exposes hate groups and their activities, Atomwaffen Division “is organized as a series of terror cells that work toward civilizational collapse.”

Their members, the website www.splcenter.org says, “can be fairly described as accelerationists, believe that violence, depravity and degeneracy are the only sure way to establish order in their dystopian and apocalyptic vision of the world."

On the website RationalWiki, Brandon Clint Russell is listed as AWD's founder.

Last September, anti-Semitic flyers featuring crude caricatures of Jews were discovered outside the First United Methodist Church in Ferndale and reported to police. The black-and-white flyers were taped to three entrances of the church and expressed support for the controversial far-right websites The Daily Stormer and Infowars.com.

Contact Susan Selasky at 313-222-6872 or sselasky@freepress.com. Follow @SusanMariecooks on Twitter.