Hundreds of Germans wearing traditional Jewish skullcaps rallied in the western city of Bonn on Thursday in support of a Jewish professor who was first the victim of an anti-Semitic attack and was then tackled and punched by police who mistook him for the assailant.
The protest rally was backed by Bonn's local government and other civic groups. They called for people to wear a kippah in solidarity with Yitzhak Melamed, 50, a visiting philosophy professor from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who had been wearing the Jewish head covering when he was attacked. Melamed was in the city to give a guest lecture at Bonn University when he was assaulted by a 20-year-old Palestinian-German man who shouted, "No Jews in Germany."
Far from coming to Melamed's aid, police who arrived at the scene wrestled him to the ground and punched him repeatedly.
The police said Melamed had resisted arrest, but he told the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper he had been entirely peaceful.
On his Facebook page, Melamed wrote, "My glasses were broken, my watch torn, and then after another five or 10 minutes they realized they made an error."
He said an officer later told him "not to get in trouble with the German police," to which he replied, "I told the policeman sardonically, 'I am no longer afraid of the German police. The German police murdered my grandfather. They murdered my grandmother. They murdered my uncle and they murdered my aunt. All in one day in September 1942 [during the Holocaust]."
The assailant was arrested and admitted to a psychiatric clinic after a blood test showed possible drug exposure, the police said.
Anti-Semitism remains especially sensitive in Germany, where the Nazis murdered more than 6 million Jews during World War II. A series of anti-Semitic attacks in recent months have raised fears that younger generations and immigrants have not learned the lessons of the past.
"I am here to set a signal, because if people wearing kippot in public are being beaten up here, then it concerns all of us," said Andre Zoebisch, a participant in the Bonn demonstration.
"I mean, no one cares if in [the Bonn district of Bad] Godesberg they all wear headscarves or men walk around in kaftans or whatever one wears based on religious belief. Therefore, I think we should set an example here today."
The Bonn rally is the second such protest by Germans in solidarity with the country's Jewish community.
In April, Germans of different faiths donned kippot and took to the streets in several cities to protest an anti-Semitic attack in Berlin and express concerns about increasing anti-Semitic violence in the country.
