CHICAGO — Chicago police are looking for a group of men who stormed a school bus, where they spewed antisemitic slurs and threatened to harm a 12-year-old boy in the West Rogers Park neighborhood on Wednesday, according to officials.
The bus was dropping off elementary students from a local Orthodox Jewish school when, around 5 p.m. in the 2800 block of West Jerome Street, the men entered the bus, according to Chicago police, who said nobody was physically injured.
“At one stop, four men jumped into the bus, hurled antisemitic slurs, and performed the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute at terrorized children,” according to a statement from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
After the men threatened to hurt a 12-year-old boy, they fled in an unknown direction, police said.
“The Simon Wiesenthal Center is urging anyone with information about the antisemitic incident to contact the Chicago PD or the Midwest offices of the Simon Wiesenthal Center,” said spokeswoman Alison Pure Slovin, in the statement. “This shocking incident took place on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom that destroyed almost all synagogues across Germany in 1938. Many members of the Jewish community have family who lived through those horrors.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is a Jewish global human rights organization dedicated to imparting the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust and to combating antisemitism, according to the statement.
Area 3 detectives are investigating and no arrests had been made as of Thursday evening.
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