After a brutal antisemitic attack on a young man in Cologne, police are operating on the presumption that the injured man and the suspects do not know each other. Apparently, the 18-year-old was attacked by a group of about ten because of his kippah, said a spokesman for the investigators on Sunday.
The man had been sitting in a park with an acquaintance late Friday night. As they were about to leave, he is said to have been insulted in an antisemitic fashion. The 18-year-old wanted to know why and was then beaten, the spokesperson explained. "He was badly battered in the face." The injured man was hospitalized with a broken nose and cheekbone.
One of the group also allegedly snatched the kippah from his head. The act was partially recorded by a police camera. That same night, the officers arrested two adolescents aged 18 and 19, whom they had recognized by means of the video recordings. The two were released on Saturday, but are still considered suspects, the spokesperson said. Because the police assume the crime to have been antisemitically motivated, the police state protection department is investigating.
Cologne's mayor Henriette Reker reacted "with horror and regret" to the act of violence. "In our city, everyone must be able to live without fear, no matter their religion, their worldview or how you live and love," she said on Sunday.
"This cosmopolitanism characterizes Cologne and makes this city what it is, so such assaults hurt us especially." As a civil society, we must make it clear that we will not tolerate such attacks, she concluded.
The German government's antisemitism commissioner, Felix Klein, expressed dismay at the brutal attack in Cologne. "I am appalled by this horrific and cowardly attack on a young man who, apparently due to antisemitic motives, was violently attacked and seriously injured by a group," Klein said Monday.
Klein praised the "quick investigative success of the police," who were able to arrest the alleged perpetrators on the same day. He said his thoughts were with the young man, whom he wished a speedy and full recovery. "At the same time, I hope that the suspected perpetrators, who are apparently only 18 and 19 years old, will be given appropriate training in which they will be taught the fundamentals of the rule of law and our free democratic basic order," Klein said.
North Rhine-Westphalia's antisemitism commissioner also strongly condemned the attack on the young man. The cowardly attack "obviously once again made visible the ugly face of antisemitism in Germany," Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in Düsseldorf on Monday.
"It must be possible to wear a kippah without fear in Cologne, in North Rhine-Westphalia and everywhere in Germany," she stressed. Attacks on the life and limb of Jews are repugnant attacks "that must be consistently prosecuted and punished with all the severity of the law," Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said.
"Let it be said to every perpetrator that we do not tolerate antisemitism in our society and will use all the means available under the rule of law to banish this abhorrent, inhuman attitude from our streets," the FDP politician declared.
