Jewish Nursery School Attacked in Germany

Unknown perpetrators have attacked and vandalized a Jewish nursery school in the German capital. The Jewish community in Berlin is now calling on Germans to join them in a prayer service on Thursday.

Representatives from the Gan-Israel Jewish Nursery School in Berlin have invited Germans to join Jewish leaders in prayer for "tolerance and solidarity" on Thursday. The call came after unidentified assailants sprayed swastikas and other Nazi symbols on the school walls and threw a smoke flare into the building at the weekend.

"The attempt to burn down and lay waste to a Jewish nursery school is a dangerous escalation of intolerance and right-wing radicalism," the school in the western district of Charlottenburg said in a statement. "This attack was not only aimed at Jews, but against everyone who cherishes freedom and democracy."

Gideon Joffe, the head of the Jewish community in Berlin, said the attack was connected to growing anti-Semitism in Germany. Less and less members of the community were willing to openly live out their religion out of fear, he said.

"I have determined greater public acceptance and also trivialization of anti-Semitic ideas in comparison to previous years," Joffe said.

Stephan Kramer, general secretary of Germany's Central Council of Jews, said the Jewish community would have to reckon with such attacks in the future, too.

"People appear to be losing their inhibitions," Kramer said. "Today, their target was a children's facility. What is going to happen next?"

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