18-year old punched and kicked by group of 10 teens who stole his kippah, suffers broken nose and cheekbone.
An 18-year old Jewish teenager in Cologne, Germany suffered serious injuries in an anti-Semitic attack and had to be hospitalized.
The teenager was sitting with a friend in a park in the western German city late on Friday night when a group of teens began verbally abusing him for wearing a kippah, Deutsche Welle reported.
The group of 10 teens then punched and kicked him, stealing his kippah.
Police drove the victim to the hospital where he was treated for a broken nose and a fractured cheekbone.
Not long after the attack took place, police arrested two members of the group of teens – an 18-year old and a 19-year old – after reviewing surveillance footage of the incident. Both were released but are still suspects.
“Clearly anti-Semitism in Germany has once again raised its ugly head,” Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, North Rhine-Westphalia’s (NRW) state anti-Semitism commissioner, told a press conference.
German’s federal anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein, said in a statement to the DPA news agency that he was “appalled by this horrific and cowardly attack on a young man who was violently assaulted by a group and seriously injured for apparently anti-Semitic motives.”
Klein called for the perpetrators to be ordered to “undergo educational programs in which they will be taught the basic principles of the rule of law and of our free democratic order.”
Felix Schotland, a member of the board of the Cologne Synagogue Community, said that community members “no longer feel safe in the city,” according to the Algemeiner.
“We expect the police, the public prosecutors and the judges in this country to take action against anti-Semitic excesses with the necessary severity of the law,” he said. “We know, however, that most representatives from politics and city society stand by our side.”
