Nazi tattoo on his chest, spray-paint can in hand, Ian Baron approached a Montgomery County synagogue shortly before midnight.
The 22-year-old seemed an unlikely neo-Nazi. Born in Honduras, he was adopted and raised by Conservative Jewish parents who lived four blocks away — at a home in Olney where he still showed up for occasional Friday Shabbat dinners.
“Death2Zionists,” he wrote.
“Arbeit Macht Frei,” Baron added, the German phrase that hung above the entrance to Auschwitz and translates to “Work will make you free.”
He painted swastikas and more anti-Semitic graffiti that night in July and was locked up the next week. A jury quickly convicted him in February of hate-crime vandalism.
The case concluded Friday, when Montgomery County Circuit Judge Thomas Craven decided what punishment to impose. Before doing so, he heard two markedly different versions of who Baron is.
Prosecutors say he’s unrepentant, is still given to racist views and has the potential to be extremely dangerous. Family members and two rabbis who know him well say he is saddled with deep identity issues and drug and alcohol abuse.
“He has anger problems. He has incredible violent tendencies,” said prosecutor Sherri Koch, who described a series of bizarre letters Baron wrote to his girlfriend from jail.
Baron wrote about bleaching his skin and starting his own neo-Nazi group. He talked up plans to buy an AK-47 — “Me Want!” he wrote next to a photo of one. And he wrote that he would remember the faces of the jurors, “just in case I need to take action.”
“We cannot ignore what he is saying about himself in these letters,” Koch said.
Those who know Baron said the threats were written under the frustration of being jailed and called them bravado more than reality. And they note that he also talks about his Jewish faith in the letters, his plans to move to Israel and raise a family.
“There’s nothing wrong with knowing about World War II and Germany, but I need to cut the Nazi [stuff] out,” Baron wrote. “I’m Jewish for God’s sake.”
Rabbi Reuben Landman, who has known Baron for 11 years, took the witness stand.
“I don’t see a neo-Nazi there,” he said, looking at Baron. “I see a very sick kid.”
Steven and Marla Baron first saw Ian when he was 3 weeks old. The adoption wasn’t final. They had to fly home without him. Marla returned early.
“I couldn’t wait. I had to be around him,” she remembered.
Baron grew up in a traditional Jewish home with two siblings. He joined the Cub Scouts, played Little League. At 13, more than 400 people went to Har Tzeon-Agudath Achim synagogue in Silver Spring for his bar mitzvah.
School proved difficult, and Baron was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. Other students couldn’t figure him out, and some let him know — using Jewish slurs that made him feel as if he wasn’t Hispanic, and Hispanic slurs that made him feel as if he wasn’t Jewish.
Baron became “increasingly defiant,” tried to run away and by his senior year in high school, was drinking heavily, according to court records and his parents. He would go on to abuse marijuana, cocaine and pain pills.
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