When it comes to security of the Jewish community in Halle one can see there were two rather different approaches at work. the Guardian reports:
A German synagogue targeted in an attempted mass shooting this week had been upgraded to fortify its main entrance and install security cameras, measures that probably saved the lives of dozens of people hiding inside.
Additionally:
In 2015, the Halle synagogue received a grant from the security assistance fund, a project run by the Jewish Agency for Israel, the world’s largest Jewish non-profit organisation. The fund was set up after the deadly shootings at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, in 2012.
The Jewish Agency chairman, Isaac Herzog, said the project had paid out about $11m (£9m) to Jewish communities for security equipment in more than 58 countries.
While from the Jewish Chronicle:
“Though police routinely guard synagogues in larger cities like Berlin and Frankfurt, this was not the case in Halle.
Anastassia Pletoukhina, who was inside the synagogue at the time of the attack, told the Jüdische Allgemeine newspaper that the synagogue had asked for police protection in the past but had been told there was “no acute threat.”
Josef Schuster, head of Germany’s main Jewish organisation, told German television it was “scandalous” that Halle’s synagogue was not under direct police protection on Yom Kippur.
The police’s “negligence has now backfired. It is actually a miracle that there were no further casualties as a result of this attack,” he said.
Felix Klein, the German government’s antisemitism tsar, said that the terror attacks demonstrated “how important security measures are for Jewish establishments are in Germany.””
