An Arab man threatened a group of 10 ultra-Orthodox Jews with a knife on Saturday night near the train station in the city of Lucerne, Switzerland. No one was injured. Police who were called to the scene did not arrest the attacker.
The incident took place at the local train station where the yeshiva students, some of them Israeli, were walking. Passersby intervened on behalf of the Haredi Jewish young men, and the Arab assailant fled in panic.
Since the incident occurred at 8:30 p.m., before the end of the Sabbath in Switzerland, the yeshiva students did not sign the formal complaint form. They were asked to come back on Monday to the police station to file a complaint, because the Swiss police do not operate on Sundays, except in cases of emergency.
One of the yeshiva students described the incident in a post on social media.
“On Shabbat evening, my friends and I went for a walk in the city and arrived at the train station, where an Arab man approached us and asked if we were Jews. He spat on us. We tried to move away from him, but he wouldn’t back off, and at some point he pulled out a knife and pressed it to one friend’s stomach. Then locals intervened and he panicked,” he wrote.
According to the student: “The police do nothing even when there is evidence.”
After the Sabbath ended, several students returned to the location where the attack took place. They documented several security cameras that most likely captured footage of the antisemitic incident.
