Chicago police are looking for a group of men who got on board a school bus, where they hurled anti-Semitic slurs and threatened several children including a 12-year-old boy in the West Rogers Park neighborhood on Wednesday, according to officials.
The bus was dropping off elementary students from a local Orthodox Jewish school when around 5 p.m. in the 2800 block of West Jerome Street when the incident occurred, according to Chicago police, who said nobody was physically injured.
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“At one stop, four men jumped into the bus, hurled anti-Semitic slurs, and performed the Heil Hitler salute at terrorized children,’’ according to a statement from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
After the men threatened to hurt the 12-year-old boy, they fled in an unknown direction, police said.
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“The Simon Wiesenthal Center is urging anyone with information about the anti-Semitic incident to contact the Chicago PD or the Midwest offices of the Simon Wiesenthal Center,” said spokeswoman Alison Pure Slovin, in the statement, adding: “This shocking incident took place on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom that destroyed almost all synagogues across Germany in 1938. Many members of the Jewish community have family who lived through those horrors.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is a Jewish global human rights organization dedicated to imparting the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust and to combating anti-Semitism, according to the statement.
Area 3 detectives are investigating and no arrests had been made as of Thursday evening.
