A 25-year-old Jewish man was insulted and spat on in front the Potsdam Central Station by two Syrian nationals, reported German daily Berliner Zeitung on Tuesday.
The student, who told German press agency DPA that he wears a kipahon a daily basis, said, “When I got off the tram at the main station, I noticed shadows behind me.” The next moment, he said, two men started spitting on him, shouting anti-Semitic slurs and making threatening gestures. He then alerted police.
The two men were swiftly identified as Syrian nationals, said a spokesman for the Brandenburg police.
Earlier this year, a leading German anti-Semitism watchdog group reported that anti-Jewish violence in Berlin jumped more than 150 percent last year.
The report, by the Berlin-based Research and Information Center for anti-Semitism (RIAS), said that 1,083 anti-Semitic incidents were reported in the city in 2018, compared to the 951 incidents reported the year before.
Over half of the incidents targeted what the report categorized as identifiably “Jewish/Israeli” organizations, individuals or activists in Berlin.
The report noted a sharp rise in physical assaults targeting Jews in the city, from 18 attacks reported in 2017 to 48 in 2018. Threats made against the Berlin Jewish community nearly doubled in the last year, with 46 incidents reported in 2018, compared with 26 in 2017.