Wearing a kippah in public has become a troubling issue in Germany.
By World Israel News Staff
A Jewish teenager was attacked at a gym in Freiburg, Germany on Tuesday, reports Kan News.
According to the report, a man came up to 19-year-old Samuel Kantrovich at the gym and grabbed his kippah (Jewish skullcap), spat on it, and threw it in the trash.
“The room was full of strong young men and no one intervened. I realized I was alone. Until today I thought it wasn’t really dangerous and that I could feel free in Freiburg but I realized that I was wrong and that if something happened to me on the street no one would want to help me,” Kantrovich told the Israeli news outlet.
After the attack, Kantrovich took to Facebook to describe the incident.
“Tonight, around 9:15 p.m. a guy sneaked up on me from behind, grabbed my head and tore down my Kippah and shouted ‘You dirty Jew’ and ‘Free Palestine.’ He spat on my Kippah and threw it in the garbage!” he wrote. “I was shocked! He looked at me and asked me ‘do you want me to beat you up? F*ck off you dirty Jew!”‘
“I was overwhelmed by this situation and (for whatever reason) I asked him ‘here, in front of everybody?’ Somehow I was hoping someone in the changing room full of men would interfere… I turned around. I looked [sic] everyone standing around in the eyes!!! No one reacted, everyone was just watching,” Kantrovich wrote.
Wearing a kippah in public has become a troubling issue in Germany.
On April 24, over 2,000 Germans of all faiths protested the rising anti-Semitism in their country by donning Jewish skullcaps and marching in the streets of Berlin and three other German cities.
The march was inspired by an anti-Semitic attack earlier in the month when two young men wearing kippahs were attacked by a Syrian asylum seeker on the streets of Berlin.
Following the attack, Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, advised all Jewish men to not wear a kippah in public when walking alone.