An attack on ‘Schalom’, a kosher restaurant in Chemnitz, took place almost two weeks ago, on August 27th, 2018. The information surfaced only now. The incident was considered serious. Germany’s antisemitism commissioner Felix Klein said “the most terrible memories from the 1930-s are being awoken.”
On August 27th, Nazis in Chemnitz hunted foreigners in the city center, after a young German man was killed in a stabbing attack. At the same time, about a dozen men dressed in black attacked ‘Schalom’, the German-language ‘Freie Presse Chemnitz’ reported.
At 9:45 p.m., when most guests had already left the restaurant, its owner Uwe Dziuballa heard noises outside, so he left ‘Schalom’ through the main door. He was now confronted with those Nazis, who were holding iron bars and stones and shouted “Jewish pig, get out of Germany!”, in German. Dziuballa was injured on his shoulder, when one of the stones hit him.
The night before, ‘Schalom’ had organized a lecture about the Aryanization of Jewish companies. The restaurant was established in the year 2000.
In this case, the police in Chemnitz seem to have reacted properly. Dziuballa told the ‘Neue Presse’ daily, they had arrived “a second later.” The officers had acted “quickly and in a competent and objective way.” He said since the incident, patrol cars would pass by on a regular basis.
The restaurant ‘Schalom’ has been attacked before. Photo source: Youtube
The State Office of Criminal Investigations in Saxony confirmed the restaurant owner’s report had come in. According to this authority, the incident very much looks like “a crime with an antisemitic background”. But the investigation was ongoing.
One aspect about the police investigation into the incident seems to be unconventional, to say the least. Dziuballa told the ‘Welt am Sonntag’ daily, the objects used in the attack had been checked by officers only several days after the crime. Up until that moment, police had seen the crime committed as an “attempted damage to property”, the daily writes. ‘Schalom’ had been attacked several times before.
Commissioner Klein said, if the reports about the attack were accurate, the incident was “a new quality of antisemitic crime”. The Jewish Forum (‘Jüdisches Forum e.V.’) said, neither the police nor the State Office of Criminal Investigations had made the attack public, before it had been mentioned in the press.
The same organization observed yet another Nazi march in Chemnitz on Friday evening. Up to 2,000 participants showed up at that protest organized by ‘Pro Chemnitz’, a radical right-wing organization. Many right-wingers, hooligans and Nazi functionaries took part, according to the Forum.
Members of the radical party AfD, which is even part of the Bundestag in Berlin, recently participated in another ‘Pro Chemnitz’ protest. The next event of this kind is scheduled for September 14th.
In the meantime, Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said, people who were shouting “The system needs to go!” had to be reminded of the consequences of the contempt towards the first democracy in Germany. “A country with our history should never forget”, Steinmeier stated.