German Jewish Leader: Police Didn’t Have Enough Protection At Attacked Synagogue

Police secures an area near Halle, eastern Germany, where shots were fired near a synagogue on Yom Kippur, October 9, 2019. Image by RONNY HARTMANN/AFP via Getty Images

By Marcy Oster October 10, 2019

(JTA) — A Jewish leader in Germany doubled down on his accusation that police did not adequately protect a local synagogue at the center of an attack in the east of the country.

“If police had been stationed outside the synagogue, then this man could have been disarmed before he could attack the others,” Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told Deutschlandfunk public radio on Thursday, Reuters reported.

Schuster on Wednesday evening in a statement had said that it was “scandalous that the synagogue in Halle was not protected by the police on a holiday like Yom Kippur.”

A far-right gunman opened fire near a synagogue during Yom Kippur services and at a kebab shop, killing two, in an attack that he livestreamed from a helmet camera. The gunman said that Jews are “the root of all problems.” He was identified by German media as Stephan Balliet, a 27-year-old German.

The synagogue’s high and strong metal doors were secured shut during the services and repelled the gunman’s attack, which reportedly was undertaken with homemade weapons which may have malfunctioned.

The head of Germany’s police union responded that the police could not provide such protection, according to Reuters.

“We’d have to guard every synagogue, every church, every mosque, every holy place in Germany around the clock, so I don’t know if this was a mistake or if this really couldn’t have been foreseen,” Oliver Malchow reportedly told public television in an interview.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

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. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO