Lufthansa investigates after more than 100 Orthodox Jews barred from German flight

Over 100 Orthodox Jews, the majority of the passengers on a Lufthansa flight from New York to Budapest, were barred from boarding their connecting flight, stranded in Frankfurt, Germany, and forced to spend thousands of dollars to rebook alternate transportation.

As first reported by the travel site Dan's Deals, the visibly Hasidic Jewish passengers, who made up the majority of the flight from JFK to Frankfurt, were allegedly punished as a group because of two passengers not complying with the airline's mask regulations.

On May 3, the Jewish passengers were on an annual pilgrimage to visit the grave of Rabbi Yeshayah Steiner, who died in 1925 and is buried in a village in Hungary. At minimum, 127 Jews were on the flight in separate groups, 80 percent of whom wore Hasidic clothing.

German police pulled aside anyone who appeared visibly Jewish on the flight at the stopover in Frankfurt, even ones who were not part of the group that allegedly disregarded the masking rules, and denied them entry to their connecting flight to Budapest, Hungary.

The flight departed mostly empty and with the majority of its Jewish passengers left behind, aside from those flying in first and business class. The Jewish passengers were also prohibited banned from purchasing another ticket to Budapest from Lufthansa for 24 hours.

In the video, when a passenger pointed out that non-Jewish passengers had been permitted to board the plane to Budapest, and asked why it was "only the Jewish people paying for other people's crimes," the Lufthansa agent replied, "everyone has to pay for a couple," and added, "It's Jews coming from JFK. Jewish people who were the mess, who made the problems."

The video, blurred because it is illegal to record someone without their consent in Germany, was posted to social media before being removed by YouTube and Instagram for allegedly violating the platforms' hate speech policies.

YouTube later reinstated the video with an apology that read, "confirming we reinstated your video & removed the warning from your channel! so sorry this happened, we absolutely should have taken into account the proper context when reviewing this the first time & we've passed this feedback along to improve future reviews."

When the passenger objected, the agent responded: "If you want to do it like this, Jewish people who were the mess, who made the problems."

The passenger then asked: "So Jewish people on the plane made a problem, so all Jews are banned from Lufthansa for the day?" The agent replied: "Just from this flight."

Usher Schik, a passenger on the flight, told the Jewish Week that he was sitting in the front of the plane and didn't notice people not wearing their masks, but did acknowledge that some passengers in the back of the plane might not have been complying.  

Schik said, "If you feel you have to punish individuals who didn't comply, that's fine. But you can’t just punish an entire race just because we all look alike."

According to Schik there were multiple groups on the flight that did not know each other. He added that when the flight arrived in Frankfurt from JFK, passengers on the flight were greeted by dozens of armed police officers at the gate. "We're talking about some of them with big rifles. We were really hurt and bothered by that."

"They pulled up my name and then once they saw me, they denied me because I'm Jewish. That's clearly profiling," adding that he wasn't allowed to board the Budapest flight because he looked Jewish and dressed in Hasidic garb.

Schik added that an airline employee at the gate told him that the order to ban Jews from the connecting flight came from the captain of the plane.

According to Dan's Deals, a man named Max Weingarten was able to board the plane to Budapest because he was wearing a black polo shirt instead of Hasidic garb. Weingarten was traveling in first class and said that he wasn't wearing a mask from JFK to Frankfurt, that the flight attendant wasn't masked and that nobody asked him to wear a mask onboard.

Dan's Deals noted that passengers said they had not witnessed any major disputes around mask wearing during the flight from New York. "From talking to several passengers in economy, it seems like there were a couple of isolated masking issues in economy class, both among some visibly Hasidic Jews as well as non-Jews."

Eli Miesels, a Jewish man, wore a baseball cap and was able to board the plane to Budapest, told Dan’s Deals that the plane pulled away faster from the gate than he had ever seen and the flight to Budapest departed with only 20 passengers but can hold more than 190.

Chuny Rosen, who was able to rebook a flight on Lufthansa told Dan’s Deals that "…he heard a supervisor tell the agents at the desk not to rebook anyone else that was denied boarding on Lufthansa 1334 onto other Lufthansa flights for 24 hours."

Zev Herskovitz, who tried rebooking to Budapest, was told by Lufthansa that he was banned from flying on their airline for 24 hours and that "the decision came from higher ups and could not be appealed regardless of whether he was masked or not.”

As noted by Dan's Deals, "While US carriers have dropped mask requirements, rules in airports and on foreign carriers can be confusing. For example, you don't need to wear a mask on KLM planes to their Amsterdam hub, but you do need to wear it in the Amsterdam airport. You do need a mask on Lufthansa planes to their Frankfurt hub, but you don’t need to wear a mask in the Frankfurt airport."

On Monday, Rabbi David Zwiebel of the Jewish organization Agudath Israel of America, wrote a letter to Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr that asked for the incident to be researched after hearing "disturbing accounts" about the flight.

"People were being punished simply because they shared ethnicity and religion with the alleged rule violators," Zweibel wrote.

Jews on social media tagged Lufthansa in the video and called out the airline for their alleged conduct. Some received replies such as "…we do not discriminate based on race or religion. We just kindly as everyone to follow the mask requirements on our flights."

According to a statement to Dan's Deals from Lufthansa, there was a larger group of passengers that "refused to wear the legally mandated mask (medical mask) on board."

"For legal reasons, we cannot disclose the number of guests involved in the incident. Lufthansa will continue to abide by all legal requirements, including the mask mandate imposed by the German government and those of the countries served. We do so without prejudice and with the wellbeing of all our guests."

The site reported that a class action lawsuit is "in the works."