Hamburg: Immigrant attacker was actor in an Auschwitz film

The Hamburger Morgenpost reported that the victim could go blind in one eye. The brutal teenage thug, who was accompanied by three young people and whom the Hamburger Abendblatt describes as a “German”, fled after his act first on an e-scooter. The police launched a search for the perpetrator which lasted for days involving investigators from the Hamburg State Criminal Police Office in the Hanseatic city as well as Berlin. He was eventually arrested in his parents’ apartment in Berlin-Wedding.

Arrested – but quickly released

But as is common in Germany, especially with foreign offenders and migrant criminals with a German passport: Aram A. was released again after a short time.

In the meantime, some details about the young Rambo have emerged. The Bild newspaper reported that the violent criminal was under contract with the Berlin acting agency Kokon (Prenzlauer Berg).

Aram A. harassed Holocaust survivors

The arrested youth recently appeared as an actor in a film for the Mundruczós Proton Cinema film production company. This film was presented at the Cannes Film Festival this year and will soon be showing in German cinemas. Notably, the title of the film is “Evolution” and it is about a family of Holocaust survivors.

The feature film, which was mostly shot in Leipzig by director Kornél Mundrucz, received a production subsidy of 250 000 euros from Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung – a regional film funding institution of the states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia – and from the North Rhine-Westphalian Film and Media Foundation a budget grant of 50 000 euros.

In this particular film, Aram A. plays a young Muslim named “Ali” who bullies a Jewish student named “Jonas” in a Berlin school and also becomes violent towards his classmate. Many scenes contain blatant anti-Semitism.

Agency boss only half-heartedly condemned the perpetrator

Dorothea Trebs is the head of the Kokon agency, which recommended the attacker to the film company. According to its own advertising, Kokon provides “experienced children and young people who have already worked in cinema and television productions, as well as new talents with great potential”.

Trebs said of the Aram A. case that she “distances herself very clearly from anti-Semitic ideas”. She “despises all violence”. She wished the affected Jewish victim in Hamburg a “speedy recovery”. As far as Aram A. is concerned, she will intervene only “when I have clarity”.

Trebs is a trained elementary school teacher and allegedly got to know the brutal attacker “as a charming young man with a great acting talent”. Trebs told the Berliner Zeitung that A. had played “the perfect villain” in films. “She could not actually imagine” that he had such a great potential for aggression. She had known the youngster since the beginning of January: “Someone from a Berlin youth center” had “recommended the young man to her”.

Jan Krüger, the head of the film distribution company, has publicly commented on the arrest of the actor. He said he “absolutely abhors any form of anti-Semitism and violence,” after the Muslim immigrant attacked a 60-year-old with unbelievable brutality.

The suspect fled and hid from the Hamburg State Criminal Police for ten days

It is currently not known whether Aram A’s Muslim family in Berlin belongs to the group of “refugees” that regularly receives social assistance and lives in premises that the state and thus German taxpayers fund indefinitely.

It can be assumed that the young person will at some point be “punished” according to the rather mild norms of juvenile criminal law. In such cases, experience shows that German courts usually impose generous suspended sentences.

Solidarity with Israel

For more than six years, demonstrators had held a regular vigil near Hamburg Central Station. They expressed their solidarity with Israel by waving Israel flags – and wanted to protest against the hatred of Jews.

But then the four militant young men turned up and insulted the participants, reported the Bild newspaper: “They shouted ‘Free Palestine’, ‘Shitty Jews’ and ‘I’ll fuck your mother’.”

When the Jewish participant confronted one of the young men, “probably his brother ran up to me and immediately hit me in the face with his fist. I was covered in blood in the arms of my mother, who had rushed to help”.

Broken nose and cheekbones

The victim’s 79-year-old mother, who was part of the vigil, said: “He was lying there, his face bleeding. I thought his eye was torn. There were splinters of his glasses on his face. His cheekbone now needs to be surgically filled. It’s the worst that can happen to a mother to see something like that.”

The retina of his one eye could be permanently damaged. Andreas M. (64), initiator of the vigil, said: “Anti-Semitism no longer only comes from the left or the right. It is increasingly coming from the Muslim side, we notice that again and again.”

This was a very cautious formulation. As in other Western European countries, the vast majority of attacks on Jews have long come from two large groups: The perpetrators are primarily radical Muslims and fanatical leftists. Both groups of perpetrators count themselves either among the bitter enemies of the Jewish people or of the State of Israel.

Charlotte Knobloch, the former President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, however continuously singles out “right-wing populist” or “right-wing extremist” parties in Europe, including the AfD in Germany and the French National Rally.

It has long been known among experts that when state organs fail to classify anti-Semitic attacks and graffiti clearly – the perpetrators remain therefore unknown – police officers and “state security officers” like to speak of “right-wing extremist crimes”. Even acts that are clearly based on Islam are often simply assigned to “right-wing extremist groups”.

How the media obscured the attack

The NDR reported on the attacks with some nebulous formulations: “According to the previous investigations, a young man insulted all participants in the vigil from a group of three to four people in an anti-Semitic manner on Saturday around 2 p.m.” As the “young man” then “was spoken to and asked to refrain from doing so, he hit the 60-year-old in the face with his fist, causing the latter to suffer a laceration.” The perpetrator apparently had “black, curly hair”.

German weekly Focus offered an even more clouded description: The police were looking for “a hitherto unknown man”. And “the attacker” had “fled with his companions on rented e-scooters in the direction of the Steintorbrücke”.

Bild, in its article about the brutal attack at the main train station, only makes it clear at the end to which population group the serious criminals belong: the thug had a “southern appearance” which is very common formulation in Germany for perpetrators with a Muslim background.