An employee of the German-Jewish organization WerteInitiative ordered a High Holiday prayer book from a Jewish bookstore in Berlin, only to discover antisemitic writing inside it when he opened the book at home.
The markings included the words “Hitler” and “Free Palestine,” alongside an obscene drawing of a penis.
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The prayer book purchased from a Jewish bookstore in Germany, with antisemitic inscriptions found inside
(Photo: Jüdische Allgemeine)
The employee, who asked to remain anonymous, told the German-Jewish newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine that he discovered the inscription on Monday while leafing through the prayer book at home.
He said he struggled to understand how the messages had ended up inside the book.
The following day, he contacted the bookstore and complained about the incident. He said the staff appeared “genuinely concerned.”
The customer had ordered another book from the same store, and that volume arrived undamaged. That raised suspicions that the prayer book may have been vandalized before it reached the bookstore.
(Photo: Jüdische Allgemeine)
Store employees told him the prayer book had arrived without packaging.
That, they said, could have allowed a supplier or another person to deface the book without drawing attention.
For that reason, the employee said he does not currently want to publicly identify the bookstore where he bought it.
The incident comes amid growing concern within Germany’s Jewish community over rising antisemitic incidents, particularly in places and spaces associated with Jewish life.