16 Yidden Detained Without Cause in Frankfurt Airport for 10 Hours

By Yehudit Garmaise

   Rabbi Yisroel Rabinowitz of Boro Park has traveled through Germany several times on his way to Eretz Yisroel, but never before had he had any problems.

   “You know when you are there, [the Germans] are not your friends and that they don’t like you, but I never ever felt so threatened by it,” said Rabbi Rabinowitz, who travels every year to Vienna, Austria, to visit the kever of his great-grandfather the Skolya Rebbe, zt”l, on his yahrzeit. Wanting to spruce up the huge Jewish cemetery where his great grandfather is buried, Rabbi Rabinowitz also had arranged a business meeting with the heads of the cemetery to discuss renovations.

   This year because of COVID, direct flights from New York to Vienna were not available, so a quick stop in Frankfurt, Germany became necessary.

  “We weren’t leaving the airport or anything,” said one traveler from Boro Park, who flew through Frankfurt to get to Vienna on March 7. “We were going to stop off for an hour. We were supposed to just be walking from one gate to another.”

  But when five Skolya Chassids made their way to Passport Control and pulled out their carefully prepared identification and papers: proof of a COVID test, a work invitation from the Vienna cemetery, and entry permission to Vienna, the trouble began.

    “Every ‘i’ and ‘t’ was dotted and crossed,” said one of the Boro Park travelers. “There was nothing that was out of place. We had everything exactly as needed.”

  As soon as the Chassids handed a German official their papers, however, the official “started covering his face with a paper and talking quietly with the guy next to him.”

  After confirming that five Yidden were all together, the German official then said ominously, “You all have to step aside.”

   While the five Boro Parkers were waiting, anxious about their flight that was leaving in 20 minutes, the other non-Jewish, or not-visibly-Jewish passengers were walking through passport security briskly and without delay.

  But when two more Brooklyn Yidden went to the Passport Control window, they were also told to stand with the other Chassidishe travellers.  

    Two hours later, 16 Jews from different flights from different places going to different destinations were told to step aside. 

   “Clearly, they were singling us out for looking Jewish,” the rabbi said. “It was black and white at this point that this is a Jewish issue, and not some kind of paperwork issue,” which had all been taken from the group.

   When a German police officer told the newly assembled chevra to follow him to a second location in the airport, the travelers reported “a very eerie feeling.”

   In an experience the rabbi called “pure intimidation and hatred,” the group of Yidden were told to sit in a hallway between two offices, German police officers visibly carrying handguns and machine guns menacingly walked back and forth in front of the Yidden until just leaving them alone and ignoring them.

   In the middle of an impromptu Shacharis, one German police officer returned to take the group’s oldest member, while he had on his tallis and tefillin, to a different location, which turned out to be a filthy and degrading prison cell in which the Boro Park Yid had to sit for four hours.

   When a policeman was asked why one of them had to be separated from the group, the police officer replied that they had to keep him isolated so that he would not inform the other Yidden what he had been asked.

  The Yidden were treated as criminals in many other ways as well. Throughout what became a 10-hour ordeal of being detained, the Yidden were not given any food and only a small paper cup of water, only after requested. 

   The Jews had to ask to use the bathroom, and when they did, the police guarded them like they were dangerous criminals who were trying to flee.

   When the Yidden asked why they were being detained, they were given ever-changing explanations about checking the authenticity of their different forms of paperwork.

   Former state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who founded of Americans Against Antisemitism, however said, After 10 hours of investigation, “if they had false documents, they would have been charged with a crime.”

   Many of the Chassids’ cell phones were taken away, however Rabbi Rabinowitz and his son were able to hold onto theirs, which allowed them, six hours into their detainment to call the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt.

    The U.S. Consulate then called the German Airport Police to investigate, which very much angered the police, but their response was to provide papers for the Yidden to sign that showed that they were allowing themselves to be detained while the Germans “resolved all of their issues,” said one traveler, who explained that out of fear, three Yidden were so intimidated that they signed the paper.

     When one Chassid refused to sign the waiver for detainment under any circumstances and insisted that he be put on a flight out of Frankfurt, finally the German police relented, but not without escorting him to his gate. 

    Eventually, all the Chassidim were released to travel onto their destinations, but by the time the Skolya Chassids arrived in Vienna, it was evening, so they missed both his great-grandfather’s yahrzeit and the business meeting for which they traveled.

   “It was a just a totally ruined, unhappy trip for us and our families,” said Rabbi Rabinowitz, who said he would like an explanation from the German government and airport authorities and “some kind of security that this will never ever, ever happen again to another Jewish person or to anyone for that matter.”

   Until the Germans provide a clarification and/or an apology, Rabbi Rabinowitz said, “Yidden should not think of going through Frankfurt, Berlin, or any German city for any reason whatsoever.

   “We were a group of 16, but what happens if a single individual goes through passport control, and they detain him?

   "Who would stick up for him? Who would speak for him?”