Maid Attacked by ‘Jews Have To Die’ Maniac in Uruguay
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
RIO DE JANEIRO — A Uruguayan woman suffered injuries to her face and body after being attacked by a man who yelled anti-Semitic slurs at her.
Mirta, who is not Jewish, met the aggressor on the street close to the building where she has been working as a housemaid for eight years in a building in Punta Carretas, a neighborhood in Montevideo, reported local TV channel Subrayado. Some clients of a nearby ice cream parlor came out to defend her.
“He said he doesn’t like housemaids because we are servants and walk the dogs of the Jews and he will kill us all,” she told local media.
The victim, who also had some teeth broken, filed a report with police, calling it an anti-Semitic attack. She had been threatened by the same man before several times, and filed a police report each time, according to the report. She said she is concerned that he will attack other people.
“He insulted me and said that all the Jews have to die,” she added. “I am afraid because he remains unpunished. When someone passes, he yells, throw stones. I’m scared.”
Roberto Cyjon, the former president of the country’s umbrella Jewish organization, the Israelite Central Committee, said in a statement that the Jewish community should be “alert and concerned.”
“Besides the outrage it provokes, I believe it may encourage other anti-Semitic attacks, not necessarily physical aggression. This episode of violence under the pathetic anti-Semitic reason of working at a Jewish household should keep us alert and concerned. Although it is absurd, it is not trivial,” Cyjon wrote.
On March 8, a Jewish businessman was killed near his store in the Uruguayan small town of Paysandu. The killer reportedly yelled “God is great” in Arabic while stabbing David Fremd, 55, ten times in the back. He later declared that he “followed Allah’s order.”
Uruguay is home to some 12,000 Jews out of a population of 3.4 million.
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