On May 4 2022, some of the passengers apparently refused to comply with guidelines requiring them to wear face masks. As a result, the employees at Lufthansa allegedly prevented all passengers who could be readily identified as Jews from boarding their connecting aircraft. The airline has said that it is investigating what took place during the incident that included customers from New York who were transiting in Frankfurt in order to catch a trip to Budapest.
A large group of Orthodox Jewish customers were denied boarding by the German airline Lufthansa because some of them refused to wear masks. The company has now issued an apology for the incident.
Late in the previous week, Lufthansa issued a statement in which it claimed it “regrets the circumstances behind the decision to remove the affected customers from the aircraft, for which Lufthansa truly apologizes.” The airline has said that it is conducting an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident that occurred on May 4, which included customers from New York who were transiting in Frankfurt en route to Budapest.
Some of the passengers apparently refused to comply with the guidelines, which stated that they were required to wear face masks. As a consequence of this, the crew at Lufthansa allegedly prevented any Jews who could be seen from boarding their connecting aircraft, as reported by the German publication Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung.
According to reports in the German local media, the employees refused entry to travelers who could be easily identified as Jews due to the fact that they were wearing skull caps or had sidelocks. We apologize that the broad group was refused boarding rather than restricting it to those who were not in compliance with the rules, according to the airline.
In addition, it said, “We have absolutely no tolerance for racism, antisemitism, or any other kind of prejudice.” The act was strongly criticized by the anti-Semitism Commissioner of the state of Hesse, where Frankfurt is situated, in a statement. Uwe Becker said that it seemed as if a whole group of people had been held accountable for something only due to the fact that they adhere to a recognized religion, despite the fact that it was evidently just something that impacted individual travelers.
According to what Becker told the dpa news agency in Germany, “This is a kind of discrimination, and it is not a little issue. Because of this, the senior management of the organization need to consider themselves personally accountable for apologizing for this occurrence and expressing a stance that is unambiguous and crystal clear.”
Becker expressed his eagerness to discuss the topic further with Lufthansa and said that he would welcome the opportunity to do so. “It is imperative that anything like this never happens again,” he continued. Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal, a Berlin rabbi and the leader of the local Chabad group, said that German businesses have to be alert to the possibility of anti-Semitism in view of the country’s history with Nazism.
Teichtal expressed his gratitude to Carsten Spohr, the chief executive officer of Lufthansa, for calling him to offer an apologies for the event that had occurred.