Hundreds of Oldenburg residents turned out in support of the Jewish community Sunday after an arson attack at a local synagogue on Friday. Jewish representatives thanked neighbors for their support.
Several hundred residents in the northern German city of Oldenburg took to the streets Sunday to participate in a solidarity demonstration in support of their Jewish neighbors in the wake of an arson attack on a local synagogue Friday.
Police estimated that more than 500 people had turned out, organizers put the number closer to 700.
Claire Schaub-Moore, chairwoman of the Jewish Community in Oldenburg, thanked those gathered for their support. “We are deeply impressed by this solidarity. We feel this strength and it is much greater than what happened on our doorstep, on the doorstep of the synagogue,” she said.
State Criminal Office investigating attack mayor called ‘attempted murder, terror’
Speaking to the crowd, which gathered near the site of the attack, Mayor Jürgen Krogman called Friday’s incident, “nothing other than attempted murder, terror.”
An investigation into the incident — in which an unknown perpetrator hurled a Molotov cocktail against the door of the synagogue — has been taken over by Lower-Saxony’s State Criminal Office (LKA).
No one was injured in the attack as caretakers from a neighboring cultural center were quickly able to extinguish the fire, which damaged the door to the place of worship.
Following the attack, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser took to X to decry the act as a “disgusting, inhumane attack on Oldenburg’s Jewish men and women.”
The leader of Lower-Saxony’s parliament, Hanna Naber, an Oldenburg resident herself, told demonstrators, “We are renewing the promise with which the German Federal Republic was founded: Never again!” Naber then added, “We have to be loud — for our diversity, for liberal democracy and against hate and incitement.”
The danger of simply saying ‘antisemitism has no place in Germany’
Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, wrote on his organization’s website: “We will not be intimidated. Jewish life belongs to our country, to Germany. Those who refuse to accept that fact must bear all legal consequences for their actions.”
Speaking with Germany’s Protestant Press Service (epd), Michael Fürst, president of the State Association of Jewish Communities in Lower-Saxony, offered a more ominous warning. Fürst pointed to the danger of simply repeating empty phrases claiming antisemitism has no place in Germany when it is clearly accepted, even furthered, by some at the heart of German society.
Fürst said, “we cannot look into a crystal ball, but it’s a short step from throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Jewish institution to shooting Jewish congregants during a religious service.”
Source: Dw
