‘Jews are banned from entering here!’ sign in German shop window spurs international backlash
The shop owner in Flensburg, Germany, said he was trying to protest the Gaza war
A photograph of an antisemitic sign on a shop window in Flensburg, Germany, went viral in September 2025. Screenshot of X
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(JTA) — BERLIN — An antisemitic sign in a shop window in a northern German town has gone viral. Now, even Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid is threatening to sue the shopkeeper in Flensburg “for every cent he owns.”
On Wednesday, passersby in the town of Flensburg spotted a sign in the window of a used bookstore on Duburger Street printed on white paper, reading, “Jews are banned from entering here! Nothing personal, not even antisemitism, I just can’t stand you.”
The 60-year-old shop owner, Hans Velten Reisch, told German media that he had put up the poster himself, out of anger over the war in Gaza. He expressed surprise over the public outcry.
Photos of the antisemitic sign went viral, drawing expressions of outrage from Jewish leaders, politicians and public officials who said the message smacked of the Holocaust.
“This is a reminder of the darkest chapters of Germany’s history and has absolutely no place in this city,” Fabian Geyer, the mayor of Flensburg, a city of almost 100,000 near the Danish border.
The shop owner said police ordered him to remove the sign from the front door on Wednesday, which he did. But local media reported that the sign was still visible inside the store.
Several individuals have filed charges and state prosecutors are investigating. Lapid tweeted that he would sue on behalf of his late father, the journalist Tomislav Lempl, who survived the Budapest ghetto under the Nazis and later reported on the 1961 trial in Jerusalem of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.
The Flensburg shopkeeper’s denials notwithstanding, his act was “a clear case of antisemitism, and intervention is necessary,” Felix Klein, Germany’s commissioner for Jewish life and the fight against antisemitism, said on TV.
The incident comes as both antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel protests are on the rise in Germany. Demonstrations against the war in Gaza, which Israel has been fighting against Hamas for nearly two years, have surged in recent weeks as an array of European nations, though not Germany, have moved to recognize a Palestinian state. The sign in Flensburg and the shop owner’s explanation suggest how widely the sentiments have permeated.
The board of the Orthodox Rabbinical Conference of Germany said in a statement that German Jews were becoming “collateral damage” in a conflict unfolding 1,500 miles away and that Germans should redirect their protests to focus on Hamas.
“The war in Gaza must never be used as a pretext for outright hatred against Jews in Germany. Yet that is precisely what is happening: people who have nothing to do with this war are becoming collateral damage,” the rabbis’ statement said. “We make it clear: Jews in Germany are not responsible for Gaza.”
Meanwhile, in Munich, a professor has spearheaded the creation of a new initiative against antisemitism, together with the German-Israeli Society, Jewish communities, several well-known personalities, and 200 other organizations in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The group’s patron is Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community in Munich and Upper Bavaria.
Called “DACH [roof] Against Hate,” the initiative by Guy Katz — an Israeli who has lived in Germany for more than two decades and teaches international management at the Munich University of Applied Sciences — launched an online petition on Wednesday with the aim of collecting at least 100,000 signatures calling for stricter laws and better education to combat antisemitism, and more protection and support for Jewish institutions. A demonstration is planned in Munich on Oct. 5, two days before the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel that started the war.
