Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Muslim Refugees Arrested in Attack on French Jew

BERLIN — A kippah-wearing French businessman was attacked and robbed in an apparent anti-Semitic attack in Germany.

Police later arrested the alleged attackers, refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. The early Saturday morning attack took place at a ferry and train station on the island of Puttgarden.

The alleged assailants were released with the requirement that they report for a court hearing when called.

Police said they called the victim “Jew” in Arabic, threw him to the ground, stepped on his hand and took his shoulder bag that contained money, a cellphone and other valuables.

The 30-year-old Syrian and 19-year-old Afghani were arrested aboard a train heading to a refugee shelter in Neumünster, Germany. They reportedly had wanted to travel to Denmark on Friday but were turned back for lack of proper identification papers.

The victim, 49, after testifying to police, continued on to his home in Morocco as planned. The stolen property was not recovered.

In 2015, an estimated 800,000 refugees from war-torn Muslim countries sought asylum in Germany. Denmark and Sweden have recently reintroduced border controls to stop refugees from pouring in from Germany.

German Jewish leader Josef Schuster said recently that while openness to refugees is admirable, care must be taken to defuse and eradicate the anti-Semitic indoctrination that some Arab refugees might have brought with them from their home countries.

A message from our Publisher & CEO 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.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.