NEW YORK (VINnews) — A German man has been sentenced to seven months in prison for leaving a hateful comment on a Facebook post about Gil Ofarim, a German-Israeli singer who was charged with lying about an antisemitism incident at a hotel last year.
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Ofarim had claimed that he was refused entry to a Leipzig hotel room because he was wearing a Star of David but security cameras showed that he was not wearing a Jewish symbol at the time.
“In Buchenwald he would have liked to be seen with his Star of David,” the 38-year-old man from the German city of Niesky wrote on the account of TAG24, a German news website, in response to the false allegations of Ofarim.
Buchenwald is the site of the largest Nazi concentration camp within Germany’s borders. The comment ran afoul of Germany’s strict laws prohibiting antisemitic speech, and the man’s previous criminal record also played a role in his sentencing, according to a local news report which said that an appeal was likely.
Public protests broke out in front of the hotel in Leipzig after Ofarim claimed he had been denied a room due to antisemitic reasons. However after his claim was discredited he has been charged with false allegations by Leipzig’s public prosecutor, although he has yet to be prosecuted.