Last week, a large group of Orthodox Jews were forbidden to board a Lufthansa airline plane at Frankfurt airport because some of them didn’t wear a mask.
The group of about 150 Orthodox Jewish men was traveling from New York to Kerestir, Hungary, to make an annual pilgrimage to commemorate the death of a famous rabbi.
They were supposed to board a connecting flight from Frankfurt to Budapest but they were barred from boarding due to the mask dispute.
According to Hamodia newspaper, the German airline denied access to the plane to a larger group of Jewish because just a few of them repeatedly refused to wear a face mask.
Although the U.S. federal face mask mandate has been struck down allowing passengers to go bare bared when flying, the German federal government still mandates to wear medical FFP2 masks on all flights and Lufthansa says it is compelled to enforce the laws on its flights as the national airline.
Only a couple Jewish passengers did not comply with this obligation on the first part of the journey from New York to Frankfurt.
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Hamodia reported that some Lufthansa agents told the members of the group that they would not be able to board because of “operational reasons.”
Hamodia quoted a passenger stating that Lufthansa agents pointed out that he was Jewish and that nobody dressed alike would have been allowed to board the flight.
Several members of the group accused the German airline of ‘’antisemitic discrimination.’’
Lufthansa confirmed that a “larger group of passengers” was barred from boarding the connecting flight. A spokesperson stated that all of this happened in connection with the previous flight from New York to Frankfurt, where some of the Jewish passengers had refused to wear masks after being asked to comply with the rule by the crew. The spokesperson said that the airline is investigating the facts.