BERLIN — A Jewish dance group was attacked with stones by a group of children and teenagers during a performance at a street festival in the Germany city of Hannover, police said Thursday. One dancer suffered a leg injury and the group then canceled their performance.
The teenagers also used a megaphone to shout anti-Semitic slurs during the Saturday afternoon attack, Hannover police spokesman Thorsten Schiewe said.
RELATED:German city bans Israeli flag - againYeshiva student murdered in UkraineHungary's Jews anxious at far-Right risePolice said the incident is under investigation and that they do not have an exact number of attackers yet. Schiewe said there were several Muslim immigrant youths among the attackers.
Two suspects, a 14-year-old and a 19-year-old, were being questioned, he said.
Alla Volodarska, whose Progressive Jewish community of Hannover group
held the performance, told The Associated Press in an interview that
members were still in shock.
"What happened is just so awful,"
Volodarska said. "The teenagers started throwing stones the moment our
dance group was announced, even before they started dancing."
Volodarska
said she did not attend the event herself, but had talked to several
members of the eight-person dance group since the incident. She said one
dancer, a woman in her forties, was injured by several stones that hit
her leg.
"There were many kids throwing stones, many of them, but
we don't know the exact number," she said, adding that the community
had performed Israeli group dances at many festivals in the past and
never experienced this kind of hostility before.
Volodarska said
that the festival took place in Sahlkamp, an immigrant neighborhood of
Hannover.