By Andre Malo
According to the Jewish Rights Group, 16 Hasidic men, including a group traveling from New York to Vienna, were detained at a German airport for more than 10 hours, the New York Post reported.
Assemblyman Dov Hikind, founder of Americans Against Antisemitism told the press that five of the men were first stopped by authorities in Frankfurt on March 7 and detained without food and water, while other Hasidim were “rounded up” and also held
Some members of the group were pulled away and “harshly interrogated,” the release said.
“It’s unconscionable for something like this to happen to innocent people anywhere, but even more so to identifiable Jews in Germany, of all places,” Hikind said in a statement.
“They reached out to share their story with me,” he said. “I can tell you the trauma and pain they suffered is scarring and traumatic, so we are calling on the German government to investigate this appalling treatment of innocent people immediately.”
Officials at the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt and the U.S. Embassy in Berlin did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.
The 16 detainees were eventually allowed to travel to Vienna, but only after denial signatures were signed that cleared the German government of wrongdoing, NY Post reported
According to a video interview released by Hikind’s group, the detained men said the problems began after five New Yorkers were stopped at border control at Frankfurt airport.
“As soon as I handed my documents to the officer, he looked at me, he said to me,‘ Are the five of you together? “He asks,” said one of the men. “I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said we had to step aside.”
“Two more people on our flight will get there,” he said. “They took their papers and immediately told us to stand by them. So we immediately realized that this was a Jewish thing.
“No one (other) was stopped for more than a minute,” he said. “When they saw the document, they said, ‘Next.’ The seven Jews, the Hasidic Jews, were told to stay away.”
The men said they contacted the U.S. consulate while they were in custody and said “they are checking my documents, they may be fraudsters.”
