Jewish student in Berlin leaves school after harassment

A Jewish pupil reportedly left a Berlin school in March following alleged antisemitic harassment by students of Muslim origin, mainly from Arab countries and Turkey.

The story, first reported by the London-based Jewish Chronicle last week, prompted widespread outrage in Germany.

Josef Schuster, president of the roughly 110,000 member Central Council of Jews in Germany, told Berlin’s Taggespiegel newspaper that, if true, “this is antisemitism of the ugliest form,” and urged that the allegations be investigated.

Muslim communities “must also actively fight antisemitism among their ranks. It can’t be accepted that hatred of Jews and Israel can be promoted in German mosques,” he said.

The Berlin-based reporter Toby Axelrod, who broke the story for the Chronicle, wrote the mother of the pupil who said a student told her son “Listen, you are a cool dude, but I can’t be friends with you, Jews are all murderers.”

The mother said her son was “attacked and almost strangled, and the guy pulled a toy gun on him that looked like a real gun. And the whole crowd of kids laughed. He was completely shaken.”

The Jewish student, himself, said: “It was terrible but I didn’t have time to think about what was happening at the time. Now, when i look back, I think, ‘Oh my God.’”