Breaking the Silence: A film by Jonathan Vaknine

Jonathan Vaknine says you can’t talk about anti-semitism in Malmö, Sweden. The high school student explained that people relate it to the most recent waves of immigration, and those who accuse other groups of being anti-semitic are often considered racist. So what do you do when you’re the victim of a hate crime because you’re jewish?

Vaknine was faced with this question when he was attacked in the hallways of his high school.

“I was walking down the hallway, and a gang of people came and asked me, ‘Are you a Jew?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m a Jew.’ Suddenly they started pushing me, screaming horrible stuff, threatening me and my family to death,” said Vaknine.

Unfortunately, when Vaknine set out to do something about it by inviting a speaker to his school, he was shut down by his principal.

“He doesn’t want anyone to think that there’s a problem here,” said Vaknine. “They say, ‘if you can’t see the problem, then there is no problem.’”

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