Melbourne police remove man wielding hammer from Jewish bakery near synagogue that was set on fire

Victorian police have removed a man wielding a hammer and verbally abusing community members at a Jewish bakery in Melbourne, hours after masked assailants set fire to a nearby synagogue.

A Jewish community security organization says its personnel “assisted Glick’s staff and remained on site until police arrived.”

Posts on social media say the bakery was put on “lockdown.”

The incident took place at the Balaclava branch of Glick’s bakery, an iconic Jewish institution founded by Holocaust survivor Mendel Glick in 1960.

Meet Mendel Glick, the Holocaust survivor who founded Australia’s largest and finest kosher bakery chain, @glickscakesandbagels. Born in 1924 in a Polish town near the Czech border, Glick was in 6 concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He was the sole survivor… pic.twitter.com/V6BaM4gjeY

— Humans of Judaism (@HumansOfJudaism) February 9, 2024