Thousands of German’s wearing kippot rallied in support of Jews after a recent spate of hate crimes. Some 2,000 demonstrators came together at the Berlin Wears Kippa event where Jews and non-Jews wore the traditional skullcap in a shared show of defiance.
Recent scandals – including a rap duo making light of Nazi death camps – have raised questions about the country’s ability to protect its burgeoning Jewish community seven decades after the Holocaust.
Speaking at the Berlin Wears Kippa rally, Berlin’s Jewish community chairman Gideon Joffe warned that the growing threat meant ‘it’s five minutes to midnight’, adding ‘we have to be careful’. The head of the country’s Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, demanded ‘100 per cent respect’ for Jews as well as for Muslims, homosexuals and people of ‘all skin colours’.
Last week Germans were stunned after a 19-year-old Syrian refugee attacked two young men wearing kippot with his belt in a trendy district of the capital, shouting ‘yahudi’ – Jew in Arabic – and lashing out at his victim with a belt. A video of the assault, filmed by one of the Israeli victims, went viral on social media and sparked widespread revulsion.
Ahead of the Berlin rally, the chairman of the Turkish community in Germany, Gokay Sofuoglu, also called for the kippa to be worn, telling the Berliner Zeitung ‘if you want to stop Islamophobia, then you also can’t tolerate antisemitism’.
Demonstrations in support of Jews with hundreds of people were also held in the cities of Cologne, Potsdam, Magdeburg and Erfurt, where politicians, Christian and Jewish leaders wore kippas and marched to the main local synagogue.
