Jewish Man Assaulted In Berlin For Wearing Star Of David
(JTA) — A Jewish Syrian man was assaulted in a park in Berlin by a group of men and women who he asked for a light for his cigarette after they noticed he was wearing a Star of David.
The 10 men and women ages 15 to 21 were detained in the park following the assault on Saturday night, and later released pending an investigation, the German news service Deutsche Welle reported. The group included six Syrians and three Germans, according to the report.
The victim told Deutsche Welle that when a member of the group saw his Star of David he shouted “anti-Semitic insults,” grabbed the cigarette from his mouth and punched him.
The group chased him, knocked him to the ground and beat him, according to the report. He was hospitalized for his injuries.
The attackers ran away when passersby came to help the downed man.
The attack comes days after a Syrian man, 19, was found guilty of an April attack against an Israeli man who was wearing a kippah on a Berlin street. The attacker lashed the man with his belt while shouting the Arabic word for Jew, “Yahudi.” The victim, who is not Jewish, had placed the kippah on his head as an experiment to see “how bad it is to walk Berlin’s streets as a Jew today.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO