Pizza Pita Attacked: Windows Shattered on eve of Kristallnacht

Pizza Pita Window Smashed on Kristallnacht Anniversary

A heavy rock was thrown through a window at Pizza Pita early Monday, November 9, damaging one of Montreal’s best-known kosher restaurants on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. The incident at Décarie Square came five days after fire destroyed Mimimelon, a kosher bakery in Ville Saint-Laurent, and prompted calls from B’nai Brith Canada for police to investigate a possible hate motive.

Pizza Pita has served Montreal’s Jewish community since 1989, moving from its former Décarie Boulevard premises to the Décarie Square location in 2020. Reports of the broken glass circulated Monday, with StandWithUs Canada identifying the restaurant and noting that the circumstances surrounding the incident remained unclear.

B’nai Brith said it was in contact with the restaurant’s owners and local police. In a public statement shared by Paola Samuel, the organization expressed concern about the frequency of vandalism against Jewish-owned businesses in Montreal and urged investigators to consider hate motivation. It also pointed to the timing, as Jewish communities commemorated the November 9–10, 1938 Nazi pogrom in which synagogues, homes and Jewish businesses were attacked.

The incident follows two deliberate fires last week at Mimimelon within approximately 25 hours. The first, late on November 2, was extinguished before it spread through the bakery. The second, early on November 4, destroyed the business. As Montreal Jewish News previously reported, the SPVM’s arson squad and hate-crimes unit are investigating those fires. No connection between the bakery fires and the damage at Pizza Pita has been established.

Pizza Pita’s former location was itself the scene of a suspected arson on December 1, 2018. Emergency crews responding to the restaurant on Décarie Boulevard near Plamondon Avenue found a broken front window, an activated sprinkler system and evidence suggesting the fire had been deliberately set. Nobody was injured. The sprinklers limited the damage, much of it from water, to the drive-through area, and the restaurant reopened that evening.