4 men threaten to blow up Belgian train unless ‘cancer Jews’ get off

Police launch search for the suspects, who issued the threat after taking over the train’s public address system

By Cnaan Liphshiz 11 December 2020, 3:16 am Edit

Cnaan Liphshiz was a Jewish World reporter at The Times of Israel

Illustrative: People wait to board a train in Brussels to the Belgian coastal resort of Blankenberge, Belgium on August 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Sylvain Plazy)

JTA — Police in Belgium were looking for four men who used a train’s public address system to threaten to blow up the vehicle near Antwerp unless Jewish passengers step off.

The suspects took control of the public address system on Wednesday afternoon between Antwerp and Mechelen, the city that Nazis and their collaborators used as an internment and dispatch station for Jews whom they sent to be murdered in Poland.

“Attention, attention,” the men said in Flemish, according to witnesses. “The cancer Jews need to leave the train now or we’ll blow you all up.”

Security personnel on the train failed to locate the perpetrators, according to Michael Freilich, a Belgian-Jewish lawmaker who has looked into and filed parliamentary questions about the incident to the Transportation Ministry.

Freilich asked the ministry to explain why the perpetrators were not caught, how they gained access to the address system and what can be done to prevent a recurrence.

The ministry has two weeks to respond.