Police in Berlin earlier this week detained a man who allegedly performed Hitler salutes at a Jewish person on the street.
Shlomo Afanasev, a board member and founding member of the Kahal Adat Jisroel, Jewish community in the German capital, posted a video of the incident on X on Tuesday.
In Berlin wurde ein führendes Mitglied meiner jüdischen Gemeinde @KAJ_Berlin auf dem Weg zur Synagoge mit dem Tod bedroht. Zwei Männer beschimpften ihn antisemitisch, einer zeigte wiederholt den Hitlergruß. Die Polizei nahm einen der Tatverdächtigen fest. Solche Bilder… pic.twitter.com/kR7um8cXti
— Shlomo Afanasev (@ShlomoAfanasev) July 28, 2026
The video shows a young man in dark clothing walking alongside another person on a sidewalk, facing the person filming. As pedestrians and cyclists pass by, the man walks several meters down the street before turning back toward the camera. Near the end of the clip, he raises his right arm high in a gesture that appears consistent with a Nazi salute.
Asked for his name, the man who gestured says “Mohammed Ali.” The man who filmed the exchange is heard calling for police to arrest his interlocutor because he’d performed a Hitler salute, which is illegal in Germany.
Afanasev later published a picture of the alleged offender inside a police car. He’d also threatened his Jewish interlocutor with death, according to Afanasev. Both the alleged offender and his companion hurled antisemitic insults at the Jewish person. Afanasev did not name the victim.
Afanasev described the victim as a leading member of Adat Jisroel. The incident happened as the victim was walking to synagogue, Afanasev added.
“The police arrested one of the suspects. Such scenes are deeply shocking. Antisemitism is not a memory of the past—it is a reality of the present. And that Jews, of all places in Germany, must once again fear for their safety on the way to the synagogue is profoundly painful,” Afanasev wrote.
In 2025, the number of antisemitic incidents documented in Germany rose slightly from the previous year to a record 8,725, the Berlin-based Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) said in its annual report, published in June.
“Israel-related antisemitism” accounted for 68% of all incidents, RIAS added. The 2025 tally, up by 98 incidents from 2024, included 178 assaults and 257 cases involving threats. The 2022 tally stood at 2,480 incidents. The data reflect an explosion in antisemitic hate crimes following Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas’s attack on Israel triggered a regional war.
