BERLIN, Germany — A Syrian man arrested after a stabbing attack at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial that wounded a Spanish man had been harboring a “plan to kill Jews,” police and prosecutors said Saturday.
The 19-year-old arrested Friday with blood stains on his hands was carrying a copy of the Quran and a prayer rug, and initial investigations suggested “connections with the Middle East conflict,” they said.
The attacker approached the 30-year-old Spanish man from behind at around 6:00 pm on Friday and stabbed him in the neck with a knife, according to the investigators.
The assault took place at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a somber grid of concrete steles located near the Brandenburg Gate and the US embassy in Berlin.
The victim suffered life-threatening injuries to his neck and had to be placed in an artificial coma but was no longer in critical condition.
The Syrian suspect came to Germany in 2023 as an unaccompanied minor, police said. He was granted asylum and lived in the eastern city of Leipzig, according to the investigators.
Police apprehend a suspect at the scene where a person was stabbed near the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany on February 21, 2025. (Odd Andersen/AFP)
There was no evidence of links to other people or groups and the suspect had not previously come to the attention of the police in Berlin, they said.
An AFP photographer witnessed the man approaching police to talk to them at the memorial, about three hours after the attack.
Police then wrestled him to the ground and handcuffed him, with one officer shouting “we have the suspect” to his colleagues.
Six people who witnessed the knife attack on Friday received counseling from rescue services at the scene, where bloodied clothes were left on the ground.
The incident came two days before German national elections and after a series of deadly attacks that have shocked Germany, including car-rammings and stabbing sprees.
German police said earlier Friday they had arrested an 18-year-old Russian man on suspicion of planning a “politically motivated” attack in Berlin.
Members of the emergency services use a crane as they work at the scene where a person was stabbed near the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany on February 21, 2025. (Odd Andersen/AFP)
The man was detained late Thursday in the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, police and prosecutors said in a statement.
Authorities did not provide further details about the alleged attack plot, but the Tagesspiegel newspaper reported the suspect was Chechen and was believed to have been planning an attack on the Israeli embassy.
Riot police and specialist officers were involved in making the arrest, which came after a tip-off, officials said.
Germany has grown increasingly alarmed about rising anti-Jewish sentiment since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
A record 5,164 antisemitic crimes were recorded in 2023 in Germany, compared with 2,641 in 2022, according to figures from the federal domestic intelligence agency.
In an attack in early September, German police shot dead a young Austrian known for his ties to radical Islam as he was preparing to attack the Israeli consulate in Munich.
Other attacks have recently shocked Germany.
In December a man drove an SUV at high speed through a Christmas market crowd, killing six people and wounding hundreds in the eastern city of Magdeburg.
In another attack in January, a man with a kitchen knife attacked a kindergarten group, killing a two-year-old boy and a man who tried to protect the toddlers.
Another major attack followed just 10 days before the election when a man plowed a Mini Cooper car through a street rally in Munich.
It’s not (only) about you.
Supporting The Times of Israel isn’t a transaction for an online service, like subscribing to Netflix. The ToI Community is for people like you who care about a common good: ensuring that balanced, responsible coverage of Israel continues to be available to millions across the world, for free.
Sure, we’ll remove all ads from your page and you’ll unlock access to some excellent Community-only content. But your support gives you something more profound than that: the pride of joining something that really matters.
Join the Times of Israel Community
Join our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this
You’re a dedicated reader
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel – to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
Join Our Community
Join Our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘272776440645465’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
