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ANTISEMITISM

Desecration of Jewish graves amongst antisemitic vandalism in Denmark

Vandals have desecrated more than 80 graves at a Jewish cemetery in the central Jutland town of Randers, police said on Sunday.

Published: 11 November 2019 09:42 CET
Desecration of Jewish graves amongst antisemitic vandalism in Denmark
Over 80 Jewish gravestones were desecrated in Randers. Photo: Bo Amstrup/Ritzau Scanpix

“More than 80 gravestones were daubed with green graffiti and some were overturned” at the Østre Kirkegard cemetery, according to a police statement.

“There are no symbols or words written on the gravestones but paint has been daubed on them,” news agency Ritzau quoted police spokesman Bo Christensen as saying.

Police said a complaint had been made Saturday.

“The attacks at the weekend… are both an attack against Danish Jews and against all of us,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a Facebook message.

“Our Jewish citizens must be respected and not live in fear,” she added.

Many other antisemitic attacks were carried out in Denmark over the weekend, according to members of the Jewish community, including a Star of David painted onto the letter box of a family in the western town of Silkeborg.

The vandalism happened on the anniversary of the 1938 Kristallnacht anti-Jewish attacks in Nazi Germany, a fact that one Jewish community leader said was “proof that the state of mind which led to the Holocaust exists in 2019”.

The Randers burial ground dates back to the early 19th century when the town's 200-strong Jewish community was Denmark's largest outside the capital Copenhagen, which is today home to most of the country's 6,000 Jews.

Copenhagen's Great Synagogue was targeted in a 2015 shooting which saw one security officer killed after an earlier attack on a conference on freedom of expression also left one person dead.

Five police were injured in the twin attacks which saw police gun down 22-year-old perpetrator Omar El-Hussein, a Danish citizen of Palestinian origin.

Both 2017 and 2018 saw 45 antisemitic attacks registered throughout the country.

READ ALSO: Denmark jails man for defacing gravestones with 'number of the beast'

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ANTI-SEMITISM

German leaders express shame at rising antisemitism

German leaders voiced their shame over resurgent anti-Semitism on Friday, one year after a deadly attack targeting Jews in the city of Halle.

Published: 10 October 2020 09:42 CEST
German leaders express shame at rising antisemitism
German President President Frank-Walter Steinmeier lays a wrath outside the synagogue in Halle. Photo:Ronny Hartmann / AFP
Two people were killed in the attack on October 9, 2019 during Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, in one of the worst acts of anti-Semitic violence in Germany's post-war history.
   
A heavily armed man tried to storm the synagogue, but when the door failed to break down he shot dead a female passer-by and a man at a kebab shop instead.
   
“I feel deep sadness. But even a year later I still feel shame and anger,” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said at a commemoration to mark a year since the attack.
 
   
No one should stand by and watch anti-Semitism “in the underground, in a café, in the schoolyard, on the street, on the internet”, Steinmeier added. “Everyone must stand up when the human dignity of others is violated.” 
 
At 12.01pm, the time the attacker fired his first shot at the door of the synagogue, all the church bells in Halle rang for two minutes.
 
READ ALSO: 
 
In the afternoon, a memorial was unveiled incorporating the old door of the synagogue.
 
The attacks have sparked soul-searching in Germany, which has placed a huge emphasis on atoning for the murder of six million European Jews by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime during World War II.
   
Just this week, a Jewish student was attacked outside a synagogue in Hamburg in a case that police are treating as attempted murder with anti-Semitic intent, condemned by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a “disgrace”.
   
A neo-Nazi suspect, 28-year-old Stephan Balliet, is currently on trial for the Halle attack and has told the court it was “not a mistake”.
   
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also voiced his regret on Friday at anti-Semitism in Germany.
   
“One cannot say that the problem has left us — and the fact that we have to protect Jewish institutions in 2020 is actually a state of affairs that is not acceptable,” Maas told the RTL broadcaster.
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