(JTA) — Estonia’s chief rabbi and two of his children were accosted on the street on their way to synagogue by a man who shouted anti-Semitic insults at them.
Police on Sunday arrested the man, who is 27 and was not named in Estonian media, at a shopping mall in the capital Tallinn, the Estonian Public Broadcasting Service on Monday reported.
Rabbi Shmuel Kot said the man shouted “Sieg Heil” and “Heil Hitler” at him on Saturday while Kot was walking to synagogue with two children aged 7 and 12. Kot filed a complaint with police, who used security camera and other footage to identity a suspect and arrest him ahead of an indictment, Kot said. He added such incidents are “very rare” in Estonia, the northernmost Baltic state, situated just south of Finland.
The incident was the first time the two children had witnessed any such harassment, Kot said, but “I were not too shaken, and frankly I think this whole incident was overblown in how it was covered in the media,” he said.
