Neo-Nazi thugs attack owner of Jewish diner in Chemnitz
Oliver Moody
September 10 2018, 12:01am, The Times

Uwe Dziuballa was injured when a dozen men attacked his restaurant in Chemnitz

Germany’s top antisemitism investigator has warned of a “new calibre” of violence against Jews after the owner of a kosher restaurant was allegedly injured by stone-throwing Nazi thugs during a week of far-right marches in the city of Chemnitz.

Uwe Dziuballa said that about a dozen hooded and black-clad men wielding bottles and steel pipes had also smashed up the frontage of his restaurant while shouting “Get out of Germany, you Jew-pig.” The word they used, ", was once a staple of Nazi propaganda.

Chemnitz, a city of 240,000 in the former East German state of Saxony, has become a stomping ground for the hard right over the past fortnight after the murder of Daniel Hillig, a 35-year-old carpenter. Three migrants — an Iraqi and two Syrians — are suspected of the stabbing.

The turmoil that followed has blown up into a national scandal after far-right protesters openly exchanged the Hitler salute and witnesses claimed that gangs had hunted down people who appeared foreign in the streets.

Felix Klein, the German antisemitism commissioner, said that the apparent attack on Mr Dziuballa on August 27, the second day of the demonstrations, had awakened “the darkest memories of the 1930s”. He told Welt am Sontag: “If the reports are correct we are dealing with a new calibre of antisemitic crime in the case of this assault on a Jewish restaurant in Chemnitz.”

Mr Dziuballa said a rock thrown by one of the assailants had hit his shoulder. He had suffered hate crimes in the past, including having a pig’s head dumped on his doorstep and swastikas sprayed on his restaurant, Schalom, but he said that this was the worst case yet. “Since I opened the restaurant in 2000 this is the first time I have gone through anything like this,” he said.

Bodo Ramelow, chief minister of the neighbouring state of Thuringia, said he was deeply troubled by the episode. He told Die Welt yesterday: “When an antisemitic mob threatens and attacks a Jewish business, that makes me furious. It recalls the darkest chapter of German history.”

Jewish groups questioned delays in the police publicising the alleged violence. “It is outrageous that a hooded mob attacks the only Jewish restaurant in Chemnitz and yells antisemitic slogans, but the public only finds out about this case several days later,” Levi Salomon, of the Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Antisemitism, said.

The ramifications of the violence in Chemnitz have reached the highest levels of German politics. The head of the domestic intelligence agency, Hans-Georg Maassen, is facing calls for his resignation after claiming that video footage of Chemnitz rioters apparently chasing migrants could be “deliberate misinformation”. This flatly contradicted Angela Merkel, the chancellor, who had condemned the films and witness accounts of “targeted harassment”.

Andrea Nahles, leader of the Social Democrats, Mrs Merkel’s coalition partners, told Der Tagesspiegel that she was concerned that Mr Maassen could no longer “protect our constitution and with it our democracy”.

Neo-Nazi thugs attack owner of Jewish diner in Chemnitz
Uwe Dziuballa said that about a dozen hooded and…
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