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The incident took place late Saturday in a synagogue in the Jewish Community Center in Debrecen, some 230 kilometers east of Budapest.
Photo: RCE
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BUDAPEST (EJP)---A Jewish group says windows of a synagogue in eastern Hungary were smashed by unknown people last Saturday night, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Nazi pogroms against Jews known as ‘Kristallnacht’ or Night of Broken Glass.
The Brussels-based Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE), an organization dedicated to assist rabbis across Europe in their daily activities, said the incident took place late Saturday in a synagogue in the Jewish Community Center in Debrecen, some 230 kilometers east of Budapest.
Police opened an investigation.
“We left the place at about midnight just after we concluded the Torah classes held by Chabad emissaries in Debrecen,” Zachi Slotsky, a member of an association of Israeli students studying in the city’s universities. "The attack must have occurred a little while after we left", he added.
The Rabbinical Center said: “Unfortunately, this is not an outstanding case but rather part of the daily life of Jews in Europe.”
“The routine of European Jewish life includes two anti-Semitic events per week. European Jews are the target of attacks dispersed all over the continent,” the RCE said.
“These attacks confirm the assumption that there are still widespread feelings of prejudice against Jews, and that to combat this phenomenon, a genuine alteration in Jewish response is eminent.”
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The Hungarian city of Debrecen hosts some 400 Israeli students who choose the city’s universities for their medical studies to evade high criterions set for students by academic medical institutes in Israel. Debrecen is also the place for Jewish activity initiated and carried out by Chabad emissary Rabbi Shmuel Raskin, who serves as the Rabbi of the Israeli community in Hungary.
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he RCE stressed that it was necessary to concentrate action on providing and reinforcing humane education of the young non-Jewish generation based on historical conclusions.” “Jewish response ought not to suffice with futile condemnations of these acts alone.”
On the night of November 9-10, 1938, about 2,200 synagogues in Germany and Austria were set on fire or destroyed during anti-Jewish pogroms by Nazi-inspired mobs.
They also smashed countless windows and wrecked Jewish-owned homes and businesses. At least 90 Jews died and 30,000 were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. ‘Kristallnacht’ is considered as a turning point and a prelude to the Holocaust, the extermination of six million European Jews.