(JTA) — A Syrian Jewish man was assaulted in a Berlin park by a group of young adults and teens after they noticed he was wearing a Star of David.
The man had asked the group for a light for his cigarette before he was attacked on Saturday night, the German news service Deutsche Welle reported. He was hospitalized for his injuries.
Ten people, males and females aged 15 to 21, were detained in the park and later released pending an investigation. The group included six Syrians and three Germans, according to the report.
The victim told Deutsche Welle that when a member of the group saw his Star of David he shouted “anti-Semitic insults,” grabbed the cigarette from his mouth and punched him. The group chased him, knocked him to the ground and beat him, according to the report.
The attackers fled when passers-by came to help the downed man.
The attack comes days after a Syrian man, 19, was found guilty of an April attack against an Israeli man who was wearing a kippah on a Berlin street. The attacker lashed the man with his belt while shouting the Arabic word for Jew, “Yahudi.”
The victim, who is not Jewish, had donned the kippah as an experiment to see “how bad it is to walk Berlin’s streets as a Jew today.”
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