13 March 2007
Moshe Aryeh Friedman, an anti-Zionist Orthodox Jew from Austria - who controversially embraced Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a December 2006 conference of Holocaust deniers in Tehran - has been assaulted by a group of Israelis in Poland, the Israeli newspaper 'Ma'ariv' reports. Friedman was apparently spotted while visiting the former Auschwitz and Birkenau camps over the weekend. A group of fervently Orthodox Jews from Israel also touring the sites set upon Friedman, who was born and raised in the United States. "We gave him a good beating, the kind we have not given in a long time," a member of the Israeli group, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, told Ma'ariv, adding: "We took off his coat and hat, so he would not look like a Jew." According to the newspaper, Meshi-Zahav, who is one of the founders of the Israeli volunteer emergency service ZAKA, was later honored with a special Torah reading in the synagogue.
