Berlin
– Classmates turn from friends to attackers after boy reveals he is Jewish
Case
illustrates long history of antisemitic harassment of Jewish pupils,
particularly by Arab and Turkish children
A
Jewish family in Berlin has pulled their teenage son from a state school after
nearly four months of antisemitic harassment, both verbal and physical, the
boy’s mother has told the JC.
Emma,
who is British, said her son, Phillip (not their real names), 14, had been
moved to an English language high school in Berlin.
Emma
said she and her husband had originally been attracted to the school,
Friedenauer Gemeinschaftsschule, which has a large proportion of Arab and
Turkish children, by the fact it was so multicultural.
She
said it had never occurred to Phillip to deny his Jewishness, and one day he
mentioned it to his classmates.
One
of them responded: “Listen, you are a cool dude but I can’t be friends with you,
Jews are all murderers.”
The
verbal abuse escalated to physical violence, until earlier this month, “when he
was attacked and almost strangled, and the guy pulled a toy gun on him that
looked like a real gun. And the whole crowd of kids laughed. He was completely
shaken.” (…)
The
case underscores concerns that educators and parents have expressed for years
in Berlin about the antisemitic harassment of Jewish pupils, particularly by
Arab and Turkish children.
Berlin’s
Jewish high school receives between six and 10 applications a year from parents
who want to move their children away from schools where they are being
subjected to antisemitic harassment, said Aaron Eckstaedt, principal of the
Moses Mendelssohn Jewish High School in Berlin.
The
requests generally are “in reaction to antisemitic statements coming
overwhelmingly from Arabic or Turkish classmates,” he said, adding that “in
most cases, the families complain about the relative lack of response from
state schools” to the problem. (…)
As for
Phillip, he would not necessarily recommend that other children reveal their
Jewishness to classmates unless it’s “a nice, quiet school.”
