BERLIN (Reuters) - Berlin police have given informal advice to Jewish people to avoid wearing skullcaps after recent anti-Semitic attacks in the German capital, a police spokesman said Tuesday.
Police were advising Jews to refrain from displaying their faith through identifiable outward signs, he said, acknowledging that orthodox Jews might take offense at this.
"We said it was possible to tuck away identifying objects, but insisted it was a person's own decision whether or not to do so," he added in summarizing what police had said in an interview with an Israeli radio reporter.
The spokesman said Berlin was a safe city and denied the police were formally recommending that Jewish people not identify themselves as such.
Israel's Army Radio reported Tuesday that a Berlin police spokesman was recommending the city's Jews refrain from wearing skullcaps or Star of David jewelry and not carry around Hebrew periodicals.
"This matter is grievous and outrageous. The Berlin police may mean well, but the recommendation indicates a fundamental problem in Germany, and in Europe at large, of unwillingness to fight anti-Semitism vigorously," said Avner Shalev, director-general of the Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem-based Holocaust remembrance authority.
In the past three weeks, a Jewish mother and her adult daughter were punched in the face on a Berlin subway car and two 21-year-old American Jews were attacked walking along one of Berlin's smartest streets after visiting a synagogue.
Security is already tight around Jewish sites and police say there is no plan to increase surveillance. Most significant sites are guarded by armed police. Barricades surround buildings such as Berlin's historic New Synagogue.
Before the Nazis took power in 1933 and went on to carry out the Holocaust, there were 172,000 Jews living in Berlin. Only about 10,000 Jews remain in the city.