Four men shouted a series of anti-Semitic invectives at a rabbi in Munich as he was walking on July 9, law enforcement officers said.
The Jerusalem Post reported that the four men followed Rabbi Shmuel Aharon Brodman as he got off the tram; the Post wrote that the men uttered “derogatory verbal statements about the state of Israel” toward Brodman, per the police report.
The suspects are believed to be Arab men between the ages of 20 and 30, Munich police said in a statement.
Ludwig Spaenle, the Bavarian Commissioner of Combating Anti-Semitism, chastised the passersby who did nothing to help the rabbi.
“We cannot allow people of Jewish faith to be victims of assault and insults,” Spaenle said. “An attack on Jews is always an attack on … society.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center similarly tweeted, “Silence of bystanders will only further embolden Jew-hatred from multiple sectors in #Germany.”
Silence of bystanders will only further embolden Jew-hatred from multiple sectors in #Germany @BenWeinthal https://t.co/qQdEStKqiy
— SimonWiesenthalCntr (@simonwiesenthal) July 13, 2020
According to a May report from the German Interior Ministry, there was a 13% increase in anti-Semitic crimes in Germany from 2018 to 2019; the report states that right-wing extremists were responsible for 93% of Germany’s anti-Semitic crimes in 2019.
