A 48-year-old Jewish man wearing a kippah was threatened and assaulted in Berlin on Saturday around 3:15 p.m. while walking with his two children on Uhlandstrasse in the Charlottenburg district. According to Berlin police, the episode began with a verbal confrontation and escalated into physical violence. The attacker, a 31-year-old man, also spat in the man's face and at the two children standing nearby. Witnesses called police, who arrested the suspect. German police are now investigating whether the incident was antisemitic, and Bild reported that the attacker was of Arab origin.
The assault came as a new 2025 antisemitism report published over the weekend documented a wide range of incidents collected during the year and classified as antisemitic by the Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism, known as RIAS. In one example from Hesse in western Germany, a rabbi was attacked together with his children and had his mobile phone stolen, while the attackers verbally accused him of Israel's actions in Gaza.
RIAS said it recorded more than 8,700 cases classified as antisemitic hostility in 2025, many of them linked to Israel. Among incidents reported by Jews in Germany were verbal abuse, threats, and online death threats. One Jewish woman received a Facebook image of a Zyklon B canister labeled "still in stock." Zyklon B was the gas used by the Nazis to murder Jews in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
The government-funded group was founded in Berlin in 2018 and is tasked with collecting antisemitic incidents across Germany. It now has regional offices in 11 of Germany's 16 states. Researchers said some Jews reported receiving antisemitic hate messages even when they publicly criticized the current Israeli government. In 2025, four cases of extreme violence were documented in Germany, including a February stabbing attack at Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe on a visiting Spanish man, who survived after a paramedic intervened. The attacker, who came from Leipzig, was sentenced in March to 13 years in prison after saying he had mistakenly thought the Spaniard was Jewish.
