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Riots Are over in Crown Heights, but Anti-jewish Violence Goes on

August 30, 1991
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While the rioting in Crown Heights is apparently over for now, black hostility toward Jews is still taking a toll on the beleaguered Brooklyn neighborhood.

A 21-year-old Lubavitch student, Berel Actipis, was attacked by six or seven black teenagers Monday evening as he walked to his apartment.

One assailant was wielding a broken bottle. When another of the teenagers cried out “let’s get him now,” Actipis’ face was slashed with the bottle, according to Rabbi Shmuel Butman, a spokesman for the Lubavitch community.

Actipis needed stitches “to hold his nose on his face,” Butman said.

None of the attackers has been arrested.

And early Monday morning, Brockha Estrin, a 68-year old Holocaust survivor, jumped from the window of her third-story apartment on the street where Gavin Cato was killed and the riots began a week before. She died in the fall.

She had been reportedly telling neighbors that she couldn’t stand what was going on and was afraid of the blacks coming to get her.

“She had mental problems,” said David Pollock, associate executive director of the New York Jewish Community Relations Council. “Her neighbors felt, because of the comments she had made, that the attacks in the neighborhood drove her over the edge.”

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