On October 9, 2019, a German right-wing extremist tried to break into the synagogue in Halle an der Saale on Yom Kippur, the most important Jewish holiday, and massacre the believers. He threw incendiary and explosive devices and fired at the access door, but was unable to enter the premises. He then murdered a 40-year-old passer-by in front of the synagogue and a 20-year-old in a nearby kebab shop. The killer was sentenced to life in prison for double murder and attempted murder.
Kantor reacted quickly
Feist, who originally hails from Vienna, was praying with about 60 others at the synagogue on the biggest Jewish holiday when the right-wing terror attack took place. No one knew what was going on at first, the survivor reported. The singer, who had a view of the front door through a surveillance screen, finally understood the situation and “reacted extremely quickly”, Feist reported. “The first confusion was suddenly fear.”
After the Jewish community blocked other doors with furniture besides the main entrance, the killer had to give up his goal of entering the synagogue – but shot two people outside. She saw the first victim on the screen, says Feist. “I tried to help, but I couldn’t because of safety issues. That was the most formative moment of that day for me”, reported the survivor.
What Feist had already noticed when he first visited the synagogue in Halle: that it did not have police protection before the attack, as is common elsewhere. “I thought to myself, maybe you don’t need this here,” she told the students. In hindsight, however, it emerges that the Jewish community repeatedly asked for security measures to be taken by the executive – “they believed it was not necessary”. The community then “organized itself”.
internet radicalization
One question from the young Viennese public to the survivor was how the attack could have been prevented. “The big problem is online radicalization,” Feist reported from her experiences at the trial, where she was just a few feet away from the perpetrator. Halle’s perpetrator was inspired by videos of other right-wing extremist attacks, for example in New Zealand and Oslo. “The Internet is really great, the only problem is knowing what is being spread?” The spread of hateful ideologies is very little monitored.
What was important for Feist to emphasize: Halle’s perpetrator was not only anti-Semitic, but also racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. “Hate is intersectional.” Another message to the students was: help if you can. Nobody managed to hold the hand of the first victim of the attack and say: “You are not alone”.
Call for a violence-free society
The opening statement at Kagran’s new secondary school had already come from Constitutional Minister Karoline Edtstadler (ÖVP). She praised the commitment of the association “Not in the name of God”, which also organized the visit, and emphasized the importance of direct exchange, especially when dealing with hate crimes. “You can make a decisive difference by looking your neighbors in the eye and saying, I accept them as they are,” she appealed to the students.
“I think it’s very important that we get to know each other,” said Mordechai Rothgold, Ambassador of the State of Israel. “Everyone is different,” he emphasized, so respect is very important. “You are the future. You are the ones who keep working to make our society better. A society without violence, a society with respect”, he addressed the students of NMS Kagran.
The vice-president of the Jewish Community of Vienna (IKG), Michael Galibov, reported again how the Jewish community of the Austrian capital was surprised by the events during the prayer in the synagogue. People tend to go “offline” on Yom Kippur, so they only learned about the attack from police officers who attended the house of prayer. “Hatred, right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism – there is no light at the end of the tunnel,” stressed Galibov.