Polish police arrested a man who briefly took three Brazilian Jewish teenagers hostage. A 23-year-old man identified as Mohammed A. was taken into custody Monday after storming into the Warsaw hotel room of three Brazilian Jewish students who had come to Poland to take part in the March of the Living. The students are all aged 16 and attend the Eliezer Steinbarg-Max Nordau School in Rio de Janeiro. They were attacked when they were leaving their room to have breakfast at the Holiday Inn hotel. “The man was in the hallway when he saw the kids and asked if they were members of a soccer team,†said Estela Schorr, the teacher who is responsible for the 48-member group from Brazil. “The kids explained they were students and the man pushed them back into the room and locked the door.” The man kept the teens in the room for one hour and said he wouldn’t kill them. He said was Muslim and that the children were not safe in Poland or in Israel, Schorr said. The teens will continue their trip to Israel as scheduled.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.