The kippah worn by the victim of an antisemitic attack in Berlin has gone on display in the city’s Jewish museum.
Adam Armoush, a 21-year-old Arab Israeli, was attacked in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district on April 17. Footage of the incident showed the attacker striking Mr Armoush with a belt, shouting “Yahud”, the Arabic word for “Jew”.
A 19-year-old man was charged with bodily harm and slander.
Mr Armoush later said he wore the kippah – embroidered with an image of a bearded man in a hat – to experience life as a Jew in the German capital.
He told the Deutsche Welle German national broadcaster said: “The friend of mine, when he gave us the kippah as a gift, he said it’s unsafe to go out with a kippah on the streets of Germany, and we had a discussion about it.
“I was saying that it is really safe. I wanted to prove it, but it ended like that.”
The Jewish Museum Berlin put the head-covering in its “Rapid Response” display cabinet, intended for items related to recent events.
Léontine Meijer-van Mensch, the museum’s programme director, told the Art Newspaper: “Museums are spaces for discussion. In future we have to react more quickly to current events that affect society.
“With the Rapid Response method, we want to invite visitors to take part in the dialogue.”
In the wake of the attack, Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told Berlin public radio that Jews should be careful in large German cities, advising against “openly wearing a kippah”.
It provoked a string of public demonstrations, with thousands of Germans turning out in public squares across the country to express solidarity with the Jewish community amid fears of growing antisemitism.
Non-Jews were seen wearing kippot in solidarity, while images of Muslim women wearing kippot over their hijabs were widely shared on social media.
