About 100 Hasidic protesters succeeded once again in halting construction of a shopping mall over the site of a Jewish cemetery in Hamburg, Germany.
As construction was to resume Tuesday, one Hasid was rushed to the hospital after a confrontation with Hamburg police for attempting to block the bulldozers. He was later released with minor injuries.
The construction of the mall on the site of the 350-year-old Ottensen cemetery has been the source of a major battle between the worldwide Hasidic community and the German development firm, Bull-Leidtke Company.
A Hamburg court ruled in early April that the 1950 decision by a group of Hamburg Jews to sell the cemetery to commercial interests voided its protected status.
The ruling followed earlier protests that had blocked construction of the mall. Orthodox Jews held a protest at the site, while prayer vigils — including one in New York that attracted 10,000 people — were conducted in front of German consulates and embassies in major cities around the world.
After the court’s decision, the development company announced it would resume building this week.
“As long as someone is there watching, they won’t begin to build,” said Rabbi Hertz Frankel, a spokesman for Athra Kadisha, the Society for the Preservation of Jewish Holy Sites, who was reached by telephone in Hamburg, where he had gone to participate in this week’s protest.
The protesters, mostly from Belgium, stood in prayer in front of the cemetery gates.
Frankel said the vigil was receiving national media attention in Germany.
The office of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has repeatedly told the demonstrators that he is too busy to meet with them.
“We are calling for an impartial investigation into the details surrounding the sale of the cemetery,” said Dr. Bernard Fryshman, spokesman for the Conference of Academicians for the Protection of Jewish Cemeteries.
“There isn’t anything as holy as a cemetery. We are certain that the Jews who sold the cemetery were coerced into it by the Germans. No Jew would have knowingly sold it,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the German Jewish community is staying uninvolved. I fear that they are afraid of rising anti-Semitism,” he added.
The aid of American politicians has been enlisted in the ongoing battle. Frankel and several others met with President Bush last week and were received favorably, Frankel said.
In addition, 11 U.S. senators signed a letter to Kohl expressing their concern about the cemetery.
“The Germans owe something to the Jewish world. This is a case of sensitivity, we have to forget about the legality here,” said Frankel.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
