Frankfurt Airport Incident - Lufthansa Prevented All "identifiable Jews" From Continuing The Flight

– Lufthansa has prevented all “identifiable Jews” from continuing their escape

A scandal broke out at the largest German airport. The airline refused to allow all externally recognizable Jews to continue flying because some were not wearing masks. The collective punishment sparked outrage.

Posted today at 15:35

Jewish passengers who are denied boarding are picked up by the police at Frankfurt Airport.

Photo Jewish Telegraphic Agency

This is a sensational incident that happened recently on a Lufthansa flight: according to several media reports, all apparently recognizable Orthodox Jews in Frankfurt were prevented from boarding a connecting flight to Budapest.

This is due to the fact that the passenger group of the first leg of the flight from New York to Frankfurt allegedly failed to comply with German airlines’ mask regulations.

The employee imposed a collective penalty

A video of the incident is now circulating on social media showing a Lufthansa employee preventing angry passengers from continuing their journey. Everyone now has to pay a price for the actions of a few, he says. And further: “They are Jews who come from New York. The Jews who caused the chaos, who caused the problems. “

It doesn’t matter what group the people belong to, the woman added. All passengers may have come from Africa and they would not be able to continue their journey. Dozens of policemen then received passengers at the gate.

According to Dan’s Deals air travel blog, there were approximately 135 to 170 Jews in flight, approximately 80 percent of whom wore visible Hasidic clothing. According to the Times of Israel, the victims are now demanding an apology from Lufthansa for the incident.

It happened on May 4. Some German media reported the incident last week. But now, with a delay of several days, it is making headlines in the US and Israel.

There is a storm against Lufthansa on social media. She is accused of anti-Semitism. A Twitter user writes: “Collective punishment for Jews …? Bad. “Several others refer to the selection of Jews in Nazi concentration and extermination camps. It says:” Old habits die hard “- in German: Old habits are hard to discard.

Another user writes: “Of course, Lufthansa has not given up its Nazi roots. They even sent 24 armed police officers to capture Jews during the selection process.

Lufthansa is investigating the incident

The German federal police informed the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ) that they had been called to “attend” after 127 passengers had been banned from Lufthansa. However, no further police measures were taken.

A Lufthansa spokesman confirmed to the FAZ that a larger group of passengers had not flown from Frankfurt to Budapest as planned. The background to this were the incidents during the flight from New York to Frankfurt. There, several passengers repeatedly refused to wear masks. The incident is currently under investigation.

“You can’t just punish everyone because we look alike.”

Passenger banned from flying

One of the passengers told New York Jewish Week that he was sitting in the front of the plane. He didn’t notice that the people in the back of the plane were not wearing masks, of course it could be. If the airline feels it has to punish people who don’t follow the rules, fine, the passenger said. “But you can’t just punish everyone just because we look alike,” said the man. He explained that there were several different cruise groups during the flight and most of the people didn’t know each other.

The injured passenger now asks Lufthansa for an apology. It was clear that individual employees were responsible for the incident. “It’s definitely anti-Semitism.”

According to the Times of Israel, the travelers made a pilgrimage. They wanted to visit the tomb of the wonderful rabbi Jeszaj Steiner. He died in 1925 and was buried in a village in northeastern Hungary.

Jorgos Brouzos has been a business journalist at Tamedia since 2015. It mainly reports on the Swiss financial center and the commodities sector. He studied political science at the University of Zurich.