Enlarge image
Police car in front of the Oldenburg synagogue
Photo: Hauke-Christian Dittrich/dpa
Unidentified people threw an incendiary device against a synagogue door in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony. No one was harmed in the attack, reported the police, who responded with a large contingent. Numerous emergency services initially searched in vain for suspects. The background is still unclear; investigations are being carried out “in all directions”. State security is also investigating. The fire was apparently quickly extinguished.
According to police, the crime occurred on Friday afternoon and there was no event taking place in the synagogue at the time. A door was damaged by the flames. The caretakers of a neighboring cultural center were able to prevent the fire from spreading. No intervention by the fire department was necessary.
According to Oldenburg police chief Andreas Sagehorn, the police increased security measures at the synagogue until the background was clarified. "The police will do everything they can to clarify the background to this cowardly act and to identify the perpetrator or perpetrators," he explained.
Spontaneous vigil in the evening
Politicians and church representatives condemned the act and expressed their horror. The Alliance Against Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism Oldenburg called for a spontaneous vigil in front of the synagogue in the evening.
Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Daniela Behrens (SPD) called for the crime to be clarified quickly and consistently. »The security authorities will do everything they can to identify the perpetrator or perpetrators. The rule of law will show a clear edge here,” said Behrens in the evening. »Even if the background to the crime is still unclear, it affects me very much. For me, arson attacks on synagogues are absolutely reprehensible and unspeakable," Behrens is quoted as saying in the ministry's statement.
Oldenburg Mayor Jürgen Krogmann (SPD) reacted with dismay. “I condemn this act in the strongest possible terms,” he said. "Attacks on synagogues are attacks on all of us - we will not accept that a Jewish institution in our city has become the target of an attempted attack." Krogmann thanked the police for increasing security measures at the synagogue.
Fighting anti-Semitism as a “task for society as a whole”
Lower Saxony's Education Minister Julia Willie Hamburg (Greens) spoke of a "cowardly attack" and described the fight against anti-Semitism as a "task for society as a whole." Everyone is called upon to “support and protect the communities, Jewish schools and kindergartens by opposing all forms of anti-Semitism.”
He hopes “that the culprits can be identified as quickly as possible,” said Oldenburg Bishop Thomas Adomeit. “This vile and inhumane attack unfortunately shows once again that we have not overcome the evil of anti-Semitism in our society,” said the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg and chairman of the council of the Confederation of Protestant Churches in Lower Saxony.
Most recently, a man in Ulm was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for an arson attack on a synagogue in 2021. The court assumed an anti-Semitic motive. In Düsseldorf, a 36-year-old was also sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a school and attempting to hit a synagogue.
mgo/AFP/dpa