Police in Germany have arrested a man in connection with suspected arson on Tuesday outside a synagogue in Giessen near Frankfurt.
Security camera footage of the incident outside the Beith-Jaakov synagogue shows a man with a black backpack performing a gesture that appears to be the Nazi salute before setting fire to a large heap of cardboard boxes pressed against the facade of the building housing the synagogue. He then walks away.
Police told the DPA news agency that the man was 32 years old, appeared to have acted alone, and that his motives are unknown.
The chairman of the European Jewish Association (EJA), Rabbi Menachem Margolin, said that the arsonist’s raised hand “was a poignant reminder that Nazism has not died out.“ German authorities and the leaders of the free world must declare war on the rising extremism in Europe,” he told JNS. “Governments in the West must immediately increase security at Jewish institutions—synagogues and schools.”
Last year, Germany recorded a historic spike in antisemitic incidents, with 8,627 cases—the highest annual figure ever documented. This constituted an 80% increase over the 2023 total.
The figures appeared in the 2024 report by the Federal Association of Research and Information on Antisemitism, or RIAS, which has tracked such incidents nationally since 2018 and in Berlin since 2015.
On average, the 2024 tally amounted to roughly 24 incidents per day—or one every hour—the nonprofit organization noted.
