Another Jewish-owned Montreal restaurant has been attacked, the third Jewish business to suffer serious damage in just ten days. This time, the target was Schnitzels, a non-kosher restaurant located on Queen Mary Road in Snowdon, where the glass entrance doors were smashed, leaving shattered glass scattered around the entrance.
Photographs of the damage were released on Shnitzel’s Instagram page on November 11, showing the broken glass at the restaurant’s entrance. StandWithUs Canada issued a statement calling for a thorough police investigation.
The latest incident comes just two days after Pizza Pita was attacked at Décarie Square. Early Monday morning, November 9, someone threw a large rock through one of the kosher restaurant’s windows, shattering the glass. The attack occurred on the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Nazi mobs destroyed Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues across Germany and Austria. Pizza Pita owner Uri Peretz said the damage did not appear to be the result of an attempted break-in.
Five days before the Pizza Pita attack, fire destroyed Mimimelon, a kosher bakery in Ville Saint-Laurent. The bakery was targeted twice within approximately 25 hours. The first attempted arson, on November 2, was extinguished before it could spread. The second, early November 4, gutted the establishment. Montreal police assigned both their arson squad and hate-crimes unit to investigate. No arrests have been announced.
The incidents follow other attacks on businesses serving Montreal’s Jewish community. In March, swastikas were spray-painted across the storefront of Gourmetti Pizza in Saint-Laurent, along with a neighbouring pharmacy and kosher butcher shop. Police treated that incident as hate-related vandalism.
The attack on Schnitzels now adds another address to the growing list of Jewish-owned Montreal businesses that have been vandalized or damaged by deliberate fires. While the timing and selection of businesses have raised serious concerns, police have not established that the latest incidents are connected or that the attack on Schnitzels was motivated by hatred against Jews.
In the space of ten days, one Jewish-owned bakery has been destroyed by fire and two Jewish-owned restaurants have had their windows or doors smashed.
The people responsible have yet to be identified.
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