70-Year-Old German Man Beaten In Anti-Semitic Attack
BERLIN (JTA) – A 70-year-old man was beaten in Berlin in what news reports have described as an anti-Semitic incident.
The victim suffered wounds to his head and chin in the Monday afternoon attack, which started with a verbal assault featuring anti-Semitic insults. He lost his balance and fell while trying to defend himself. The victim had tried to respond verbally to the insults before he was beaten.
The assailant, whose identity is unknown, fled when a passerby rushed to the scene. Police are investigating.
It is not clear from reports in the German media whether the victim actually is Jewish.
The attack is one of several against Jews reported in recent months in the German capital, including one in which men on a balcony spat on a rabbi and his young son on their way home from synagogue on a Friday night. That investigation was dropped for lack of evidence.
“It is unacceptable that in broad daylight someone taking a walk is subjected to an anti-Semitic insults and then beaten up when he tries to defend himself verbally,” Berlin Mayor Michael Müller said Tuesday when reports of the attack were published. “These kinds of attacks must not become everyday occurrences in Berlin.”
In the 13 months from July 1, 2018, to July 31, 2019, Berlin reportedly investigated 488 criminal cases related to anti-Semitism; in 169
cases, the perpetrators were not identified. Many of the cases involved vandalism of property, insults and threats.
Muller thanked the passerby, who “showed courage and civic-mindedness by intervening and causing the perpetrator to flee.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO