http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=175802 German synagogue attacked by arsonists
By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
17/05/2010 20:50
Perpetrators' note demands that Jews "give Palestinians peace."
BERLIN - A synagogue in the German city of Worms was attacked by arsonists on Monday.
The attackers left a note linking their torching of the synagogue with the Israel-Palestinian conflict, according to a report in the regional paper Wiesebadner Kurier. German police found eight copies of a note written in “awkward” German, claiming responsibility for setting the place blaze.
“So long as you do not give the Palestinians peace, we are not going to give you peace,” stated the note.
Public prosecutor Klaus-Peter Mieth said there was still an open question regarding the authenticity of the note. However, Levi Salomon, who heads a task force combating anti-Semitism for the 12,000-member Berlin Jewish community, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that he could not rule out that German Palestinians had set the synagogue afire.
While there are no current statistics on the rise of Islamic anti-Semitism in Germany, according to Salomon, he has observed an increase in expressions of Muslim hatred of Jews. Observers of the attack said they believe the perpetrators could have been extreme leftists, neo-Nazis or radical Islamists. What unites these groups, they said, is their common hatred of Israel.
“We are a small minority in Germany and we have a such a history," Stella Schindler-Siegreich, the head of the Jewish community in Mainz, told the Kurier after traveling to Worms.
Germans destroyed the synagogue in Worms in 1938 during the Nazi period and the place of worship was rebuilt in 1961. Authorities said there was no serious damage to the Synagogue.
In sharp contrast to many Jewish institutions and synagogues in Germany, the Worms synagogue does not have a police presence or barricades protecting the building, according to Schindler-Siegreich. The synagogue dates back to the year 1034.