Jew wounded in suspected hate crime in Switzerland

Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — An Orthodox Jew from Belgium was lightly wounded in an assault in Switzerland, which witnesses called an anti-Semitic attack.

The victim of the Monday evening assault in the Davos area is a 26-year-old tourist from Antwerp, according to a report published Wednesday in the online edition of the Swiss Jewish weekly Tachles.

The victim, identified only as A. Wachsstock, was walking toward his car, where his wife and four children were waiting for him, when a man in his sixties began hitting him and shouting anti-Semitic profanities, including “Juden raus,” or “Jews, get out” in German.

Wachsstock entered his car with lacerations on his right hand from the assault and drove away, Tachles reported. The man’s family witnessed the assault.

Wachsstock complained to police about the assault but no suspects are in custody.

In 2011, a man in his twenties seriously wounded a French Jew in the parking lot of Geneva’s Natural History Museum while the victim was putting a baby carriage in the trunk of his car. He was stabbed four times in view of his family. The man suspected of the attack was declared last year unfit to stand trial for mental reasons.