German cop orders rabbi to erase pics of attackers

Police officer and security personnel ordered a rabbi to delete photographs of suspects in anti-Semitic violent attack.

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
Haredi man with kids on mobile phone 311 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Haredi man with kids on mobile phone 311
(photo credit: REUTERS)
BERLIN – A German police officer and security personnel ordered a rabbi to delete photographs of the suspects who engaged in an alleged violent anti-Semitic attack on him in a shopping center last week in Offenbach, a city near Frankfurt.
New details have since emerged, including that the youths shouted “Viva Palestine” during the attack on Rabbi Mendel Gurewitz.
The daily Die Welt reported that security personnel at the KOMM shopping center and a police officer ordered the rabbi to delete his cellphone photographs of the attackers. Six to eight “Mediterranean looking” youths attacked the 39-year-old Orthodox rabbi last week, pushing him and calling him a “shitty Jew."
Mark Dainow,  deputy representative of  the Jewish community of Offenbach, told EPD news service that the youths appeared to be of “Middle Eastern origin,”
The police and security officials offered no reason for forcing the rabbi to delete the photographs. The head of the police station apologized for the officer’s action, but it is unclear if the officer was disciplined for ordering the rabbi to destroy evidence of the attack.
Authorities in the city Darmstadt launched an investigation into bodily harm and insults directed at Gurewitz.
Dr. Dieter Graumann, head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, said it is unacceptable that a person can be insulted and threatened because his clothing identifies him as a Jew. He called the failure of the socalled security personnel “a particularly big scandal.”