'Get out, Jewish pig': Schalom restaurant in Germany attacked by far-right thugs

Owner Uwe Dziuballa injured in suspected anti-Semitic attack last month in Chemnitz, which has been rocked by anti-migrant demonstrations

BERLIN — Masked assailants hurled rocks and bottles at a Jewish restaurant, injuring the owner, in an apparently anti-Semitic attack nearly two weeks ago on the sidelines of a wave of neo-Nazi protests in an east German city, authorities and reports said Saturday.

A spokesman for the regional interior ministry said “a politically motivated act with an anti-Semitic background was the most plausible” explanation for the attack in Chemnitz.

The city has been convulsed by violent far-right, anti-immigration demonstrations since the killing of a German man, allegedly by asylum-seekers, in late August.

Police in Saxony confirmed to the newspaper Die Welt that they had received a complaint of the attack on the “Schalom” restaurant on the sidelines of the demonstrations.

The masked, black-clad offenders shouted “Get out of Germany, you Judensau” (Jewish pig), Die Welt reported.

Uwe Dziuballa, owner of the ‘Schalom’ restaurant in Chemnitz, eastern Germany, describes to a journalist on September 8, 2018, how he was hit in the shoulder with a rock when his Jewish restaurant was attacked by a group of masked men on August 27, 2018. (AFP/John MacDougall)

A mob of around a dozen people — wearing black, with their faces covered — hurled rocks, bottles and a metal pipe at the restaurant on August 27, according to reports in Die Welt and the Freie Presse newspaper.

Owner Uwe Dziuballa suffered an injury to the shoulder during the attack, the reports said.

The restaurant, which was opened in 2000, has been attacked several times before.

Demonstrators in Chemnitz, eastern Germany, on September 7, 2018, after several nationalist groups called for marches protesting the killing of a German man two weeks ago, allegedly by migrants from Syria and Iraq. (AP/Jens Meyer)

The Chemnitz knife attack is the latest in a series of violent crimes by refugees that have garnered massive media attention and stoked anger at German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow in more than one million migrants and refugees since 2015.

Far-right groups and thousands of local citizens have taken to the streets since the stabbing, with some seen flashing the illegal Nazi salute.

Times of Israel contributed to this report.