Berlin – A Jewish high school student at Berlin’s prestigious John F. Kennedy School was bullied for months with antisemitic taunting.
According to the Berliner Zeitung, the student was harassed on his way to and from school. Classmates blew cigarette smoke in his face, shamed him about his weight, and suggested he think about his relatives who died in the gas chambers. Students left notes with drawings of swastikas on his desk.
At one point he was ridiculed for being “a good Jew,” because in a debate he disagreed with the Israeli government treatment of the Arabs.
The school, which is funded and administered by the US embassy, and caters to the children of foreign diplomats, issued a statement revealing that “at the beginning of June, school management became aware of antisemitic bullying. The incidents occurred in the ninth grade and were initially misunderstood in magnitude and seriousness.”
The school also announced tighter security measures, and promised to summon the offending students to meetings with school officials. Also, next year’s curriculum will include topics like discrimination, with a presentation by the Jewish Forum for Democracy.
Berliner Zeitung also mentioned a recent case in which a primary school Jewish girl in the Berlin borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg was threatened with death by Arab classmates, because she did not believe in Allah.
