'Seig Heil' and assault rifles: The president of Charlottesville's synagogue described a harrowing scene outside the temple
REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
The president of a synagogue in Charlottesville, Virginia described a harrowing scene with armed white supremacists threatening the temple and chanting Nazi slogans during the tumultuous protests that rocked the town on Friday and Saturday.
"For half an hour, three men dressed in fatigues and armed with semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the temple," Alan Zimmerman, the president of Congregation Beth Israel, wrote. "Had they tried to enter, I don't know what I could have done to stop them, but I couldn't take my eyes off them, either."
Zimmerman said he was forced to hire an armed guard because the Charlottesville police refused to provide an officer to watch over the temple's Saturday morning services.
"Several times, parades of Nazis passed our building, shouting, 'There's the synagogue!' followed by chants of 'Seig Heil' and other anti-Semitic language," Zimmerman said. "Some carried flags with swastikas and other Nazi symbols."
"This is 2017 in the United States of America," he added.
Zimmerman described how he advised congregants to leave the temple through the back door, and that the temple was forced to take the "precautionary step" of removing their Torahs - including a Holocaust-era scroll - from the building.
"The fact that a calamity did not befall the Jewish community of Charlottesville on Saturday was not thanks to our politicians, our police, or even our own efforts, but to the grace of God," Zimmerman added, leveling criticism at Charlottesville's mayor who Zimmerman said failed to address the synagogue's security concerns.
Zimmerman said that the Charlottesville community - Jewish or not - came together in profound ways for the synagogue. A Navy veteran "took it upon himself" to stand watch over the synagogue during Shabbat services on Friday evening and Saturday morning, Zimmerman said, and at least "a dozen" complete strangers stopped by the synagogue to ask if they needed assistance.
Zimmerman also described how an elderly woman, who said she was Roman Catholic, approached him, crying and asked, "Why do they hate you?"
"I had no answer to the question we've been asking ourselves for thousands of years," Zimmerman said.
- 2 states where home prices are falling because there are too many houses and not enough buyers
- US buys 81 Soviet-era combat aircraft from Russia's ally costing on average less than $20,000 each, report says
- A couple accidentally shipped their cat in an Amazon return package. It arrived safely 6 days later, hundreds of miles away.
- 9 health benefits of drinking sugarcane juice in summer
- 10 benefits of incorporating almond oil into your daily diet
- From heart health to detoxification: 10 reasons to eat beetroot
- Why did a NASA spacecraft suddenly start talking gibberish after more than 45 years of operation? What fixed it?
- ICICI Bank shares climb nearly 5% after Q4 earnings; mcap soars by ₹36,555.4 crore
- Nothing Phone (2a) blue edition launched
- JNK India IPO allotment date
- JioCinema New Plans
- Realme Narzo 70 Launched
- Apple Let Loose event
- Elon Musk Apology
- RIL cash flows
- Charlie Munger
- Feedbank IPO allotment
- Tata IPO allotment
- Most generous retirement plans
- Broadcom lays off
- Cibil Score vs Cibil Report
- Birla and Bajaj in top Richest
- Nestle Sept 2023 report
- India Equity Market