Lithuania’s Jewish community has described an attack on visiting Israeli rabbis in Vilnius earlier this month as shocking but said such incidents remain rare in the country.
Police have opened a pretrial investigation after a man allegedly spat on three Orthodox Jewish visitors in central Vilnius and later posted a video of the attack online while encouraging others to target Jews in the same way.
The suspect, a man born in 1972, was briefly detained before being released. He later announced online that he was seeking donations to cover his legal expenses.
Faina Kukliansky, chair of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, said the organisation had contacted the victims and would provide them with legal assistance.
She said the men were rabbis from Israel who had been visiting Jewish heritage sites in Belarus before traveling to Vilnius to visit the grave of the Vilna Gaon, one of Judaism’s most revered scholars.
