Lufthansa apologizes to Jewish passengers

Some passengers refused to wear masks, Lufthansa said. However, the airline excluded all travelers who could be identified as Jews, not just those passengers who did not comply with the mask requirement.

A group of Jewish travelers were denied boarding to Budapest.

Johannes Eisele / Reuters

suk. Lufthansa has denied a group of orthodox Jews onward flights because several of them were apparently not wearing corona masks. The airline has now officially apologized for its actions. “The events are not in line with our values,” the airline said. According to the current status, the Lufthansa staff then excluded all recognizable Jewish-Orthodox people at Frankfurt Airport from the onward flight to Budapest – and not specifically the passengers who were not wearing a mouth and nose cover. The Hessian anti-Semitism commissioner Uwe Becker accused the company of discrimination. The incident happened last week.

The Lufthansa statement now states that the incident is being taken very seriously and that intensive work is being done to clarify the matter. “Regardless of this, we regret that the larger group was not able to continue their journey instead of limiting this decision to individual people.” The airline apologized for preventing passengers from continuing their journey and “hurting their personal feelings”.

Accordingly, a group of around 120 orthodox Jewish passengers arrived in Frankfurt and wanted to fly on to Budapest for a memorial event. This was preceded by the repeated refusal of some passengers on the flight from New York to Frankfurt, even after the crew had asked them to wear masks to protect against infection with the corona virus, Lufthansa had previously described the process. Groups would have formed in front of the toilets, which is not allowed under the rules of the US air traffic control.

The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” had written, citing a passenger on the Lufthansa plane from New York, that all travelers who could be identified as Jews by their hat and sidelocks were excluded from further carriage – and not the passengers in a targeted manner who would not have adhered to the mask requirement. “There is no tolerance for racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination of any kind,” says Lufthansa’s statement. The airline wants to get in touch with the affected passengers, apologize and discuss “how we can improve our processes in such situations”.

Anti-Semitism Commissioner: “This is not a trifle”

Apparently, because of their recognizable belief alone, a whole group of people was held responsible for something that only affected individual travellers, said the Hessian anti-Semitism officer Becker, according to dpa. “This is discriminatory and not trivial, and all the more reason why the top management should feel personally responsible for apologizing for this incident and taking a clear and unequivocal position,” said Becker. He would be happy to talk to Lufthansa. “Something like this must not be repeated,” he emphasized.

By Wednesday noon, more than 1,000 comments had been collected under Lufthansa’s English-language tweet. Among other things, users criticize the fact that Lufthansa does not state in its apology that the passengers were Jewish, instead it writes of a “large group”.


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