Slain Israeli Embassy staffer Sarah Milgrim spoke out over antisemitic messages at high school 8 years before fatal shooting

Slain Israeli Embassy staffer Sarah Milgrim once spoke out against hateful antisemitic graffiti at her high school nearly a decade before she was killed in a terrorist attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum.Milgrim, then a 17-year-old senior, voiced her concerns about the sickening messages and symbols — which included a swastika — that were painted on a storage shed on the campus of Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kan., in February 2017.“It’s so ignorant that you would bring up a symbol like that brings so much pain to a lot of people.It’s not OK,” Milgrim told KSHB 41 in a resurfaced interview.The messages included “East Loves Nazi,” “Hillary won LOL” and “Luck the Fancers” a play on words insult to the school’s mascot the Lancer, in pre basketball game rivalry stunt.Four swastikas were painted alongside the texts in black paint.Milgrim had said the antisemitic tags outside the school caused her to fear for her safety.“I worry about going to my synagogue and now I have to worry about safety at school and that shouldn’t be a thing,” she told the outlet.Robert Milgrim said his daughter tried to turn the hateful messages into a chance to better the world., resulting in her taking a job with the Israeli Embassy in an effort to encourage peace in the Middle East.“I can’t say it bounced off her, but she accepted it,” the elder Milgrim told KSHB Thursday.

“She understood it and tried to be a good example so that maybe there would be less antisemitism.It didn’t turn out very well for her.”A former football player from Shawnee Mission South High was charged with vandalism in connection to the incident in March 2017, the Kansas City Star reported.Milgrim graduated from the school three months later before attending the University of Kansas where she earned a bachelor’s in environmental studies.She later received a master’s in international affairs from American University and a master’s in natural re...