Two people have been killed and another two seriously injured during a live-streamed anti-Semitic attack on a German synagogue on Yom Kippur.
The attacker, known as Stephan B, is a 20-year-old German male, who broadcast his crimes on Amazon’s game streaming service known as Twitch.
Reuters notes that during his broadcast he claimed:
“I think the Holocaust never happened,” he began, before adding “feminism is the cause of decline in birth rates in the West” and mentioning mass immigration. He concluded: “The root of all these problems is the Jew.”
During the video, the attacker drove a van into the synagogue and forced the gates open. He shot a woman passer-by and a man near a kebab shop.
A spokeswoman for Amazon responded to the attack maintaining that the company “worked with urgency to remove this content and will permanently suspend any accounts found to be posting or reposting content of this abhorrent act.”
German Chancellor, Angela Merkel visited a Berlin synagogue and spoke to a crowd of 200 people. In response to the attack she tweeted her condemnation of antisemitism, stating:
“We must oppose any form of anti-Semitism.”
Thanks to the actions of the Jewish community leaders, safeguards were in place to protect those inside the synagogue.
Max Privorozki, Halle’s Jewish community chairman, told reporters;
“We saw via the camera system at our synagogue that a heavily armed perpetrator with a steel helmet and a gun tried to shoot open our doors […] We barricaded the doors from inside and waited for the police,”
There were an approximate, 70 to 80 people inside the synagogue observing Yom Kippur, known as the Day of Atonement which is marked by fasting and solemn prayer.
These attacks follow a worrying resurgence of antisemitism and xenophobia in Germany and abroad.
