An unknown assailant on Saturday attacked the president of the tiny Jewish community of the Austrian city of Granz with what is believed to have been a baseball bat.
The Austrian paper Der Standard wrote when Elie Rosen “left his car, he was attacked by the stranger with a wooden stick, apparently a baseball bat. He managed to escape back into the car at the last second. After that, the attacker hit the vehicle with the baseball bat before he fled.”
The Austrian government in Graz provided personal protection for Rosen after the attack. Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz expressed “shock” about the attack on Rosen, according to the Austrian news outlet ORF. A perpetrator, or perpetrators, has attacked the Graz Synagogue twice within the last week.
On Wednesday, antisemitic pro-Palestinian graffiti was smeared on the building. The state’s security service said the attack has a pro-Palestinian background and launched an investigation. Rosen told the daily Wiener Zeitung the slogan “Free Palestine” was written on the synagogue, a phrase that typically means the elimination of the Jewish state.
“In Graz we are dealing with a stronger left-wing and anti-Israel antisemitism. We can clearly determine that.” He ruled out the attack as being from right-wing extremists.
Samuel Laster, an Israeli journalist in Vienna and an expert on Austrian antisemitism, told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday that “I find the attack shameful and repulsive. It is important to stand up against antisemitism and to fight its causes.”
He added that “The intersection between attacks on Israel and attacks against Jews must be stopped, especially in Graz – the city where the Nazis came to power before the Anschluss.”
The Hitler movement annexed (Anschluss) Austria in 1938 with the overwhelming approval of the Austrian population. Laster said Chancellor Kurz has clearly positioned himself against antisemitism.
Austrians destroyed the Graz Synagogue during a night of anti-Jewish violence in 1938. In 2000, the city opened a new synagogue.
There are 150 members of the Graz Jewish community.
