A big number of Jewish passengers were unable to board a connecting flight at Frankfurt Airport, Germany. The people had flown to that city with the Lufthansa airline from New York and intended to take another flight to Budapest to attend a religious pilgrimage.
According to the explanation given by one of the affected passengers, Yitzy Halpern, to CNN, people were about to board the flight when he and others with whom he had no relationship were prevented from boarding.
According to the man’s account, the airline later told them that their tickets to Budapest had been canceled due to an incident on the flight they had taken before from New York to Frankfurt, in which, allegedly, they did not comply with biosafety regulations such as the use of face masks and other instructions from the crew.
The passengers also told that outlet that even though they were not traveling together, they were treated as a group. Later, the passengers noticed that they had something in common: they were Jewish, for which they accused the airline of anti-Semitism.
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In a recording made by passengers during the inconvenience, Halpern is heard claiming: “I’m not with the group. I understand the pilot made a decision and we don’t question the pilot’s decision, but apparently, we are banned from the other flights of Lufthansa… Is this a Lufthansa decision, that all the Jews who were on that flight cannot take any other flight today?”
Following this, the man asked an airline employee: “I wore a mask all the time. Why am I grouped with them?” “Everyone has to pay for a couple,” the clerk replied.
In the video, Halpern asks the man to clarify what he means by “everyone,” to which the employee replies, “Because he’s a Jew coming from JFK.” Later in the recording, after several seconds of arguing between the two, the employee said: “The Jews were the disaster, the ones who created the problems“.
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Halpern questioned the latter, asking: “So the Jews created the problems on the plane so that all Jews are banned from Lufthansa for that day?“. The employee replied: “Only for this flight.”
Airline explanation
Lufthansa airline spokesman Tal Muscal told CNN that he “regrets the circumstances surrounding the decision to exclude the affected passengers from the flight” and apologized to those affected.
“What happened is not consistent with Lufthansa’s policies or values. We have zero tolerance for racism, antisemitism and discrimination of any kind. While Lufthansa is still reviewing the facts and circumstances of that day, we regret that the large group was denied boarding instead of being limited to guests who did not comply,” Muscal told the US media.
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