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Orthodox Jewish Tourist Assaulted in Switzerland

Attacker yelled ‘Juden Raus’ at man visiting Davos with his wife and four kids

by
Stephanie Butnick
August 13, 2014
View of Davos, Switzerland. (© Davos)
View of Davos, Switzerland. (© Davos)

Add Switzerland to the list of countries in Europe where Jews have been targeted in recent months. A 26-year-old from Antwerp, Belgium, visiting Davos with his wife and four children, was assaulted by a man who yelled “Juden raus” are him while his family watched from inside a car, JTA reports.

The victim, identified only as A. Wachsstock, was walking toward his car, where his wife and four children were waiting for him, when a man in his sixties began hitting him and shouting anti-Semitic profanities, including “Juden raus,” or “Jews, get out” in German.



Wachsstock entered his car with lacerations on his right hand from the assault and drove away, Tachles reported. The man’s family witnessed the assault.

Europe has become an unusually tense place for Jews this summer. Last month, demonstrators at an anti-Israel rally in Berlin shouted “Jew, Jew, Cowardly Pig, Come on out and Fight” as the gathering turned increasingly anti-Semitic. In Paris, where a shocking number of anti-Semitic incidents have occurred this year, a Jewish teenage girl was pepper sprayed in the face last month by an assailant who shouted anti-Semitic slurs. Several weeks earlier, a Jewish teenager wearing a yarmulke and tzitzit was attacked with a Taser by a group of teens. It’s not entirely surprising that more than 400 French Jews moved to israel en masse last month, even in the midst of the country’s Gaza operation.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.