German political and religious leaders expressed shock Wednesday over an anti-Semitic attack on two men in an upscale neighborhood of central Berlin filmed by one of the victims.
A spokeswoman for Chancellor Angela Merkel and Justice Minister Katarina Barley condemned the incident as a "disgrace" for German democracy after the brief video surfaced on news websites and went viral. "It is unbearable that Jews in Germany are attacked on the open street in the middle of Berlin," Barley tweeted.
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Germany "bears a responsibility to protect Jewish life" more than 70 years after the end of the Holocaust in which the Nazis murdered six million European Jews.
The two men in their early 20s wearing kippas, traditional Jewish skullcaps, were accosted in the Prenzlauer Berg district of the capital by three young men, at least one of whom spoke Arabic.
AFP