German authorities are under pressure to open a national inquiry after a Jewish boy aged 14 was forced to leave his Berlin school after being violently bullied by Muslim classmates.
The boy, whose mother is British, has been removed from the Friedenauer Gemeinschaftsschule in the German capital because of what Jewish leaders have described as “anti-Semitism of the ugliest form”, according to reports.
The child has been sent to an international college instead.
His parents had picked the Friedenauer Gemeinschaftsschule (pictured) because they considered it a model of multiculturalism. Many of its pupils are of Turkish and Arab extraction.
However, according to thelocal.de the boy’s family claims that when his classmates discovered his Jewish background, they turned on him, with one saying “Jews are all murderers”.
The news site reported that the abuse later became violent, with classmates physically attacking and even strangling the teenager, as well as brandishing a replica gun in front of him.
It is claimed the school was slow to act, despite repeated complaints from the family.
Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has called for an investigation. He told Tagesspiegel that “if the report is true, it is deeply shocking. This is anti-Semitism of the ugliest form.”
He also said that Muslim communities “must also actively fight anti-Semitism among their ranks. It can’t be accepted that hatred of Jews and Israel can be promoted in German mosques.”
The controversy will likely add to problems for German chancellor Angela Merkel, whose policy of allowing about 1 million north African and middle eastern people to settle in Germany since 2015 without consulting the nation has been consistently criticized in some quarters. The anti-Semitic parallels with Nazi Germany will only add to her discomfort.
“These cases are becoming ever more common, and not only in Berlin,” Levi Salomon, a spokesman for the Jewish Democracy Forum told Tagesspiegel. “It is high time the federal government set up a commission for anti-Semitism.”
