The Holocaust Memorial Day marking the genocides of the 20th century was marred when a gang of youths pelted Jewish tourists on a guided tour of Whitechapel with bricks and stones.
Police are treating the attack as “racially motivated, possibly anti-Semitic.”
A group of 96 visitors, many of the men wearing Jewish skullcaps who on their way to an interfaith service at East London Central Synagogue, were being taken on a guided tour of historic Jewish sites when they were attacked by youths hiding behind a wall.
Two visitors, an American woman lecturer just moved to London to teach at London’s Metropolitan University campus in Whitechapel and a Canadian lecturer with her, were both struck on the head and had to go to hospital, blood pouring from their wounds.
The guided tour was organized by local historian Clive Bettington, who has now been offered police escorts on future guided tours. But a defiant Clive has refused.
“I don’t want uniformed officers accompanying my walks, which is admitting there are ‘no go’ areas,” he told the East London Advertiser.
“Neither will I cancel any walks. We have right to walk our streets unmolested.
“This won’t stop me. I won’t be intimidated.”
Date: January 30, 2008
By Mike Brooke
