- Lufthansa Airlines apologized after videos emerged of Orthodox Jews being barred from a flight last week.
- A Lufthansa employee was filmed saying it was "Jewish people who were the mess."
- The airline's CEO personally apologized to Berlin's chief rabbi on Wednesday.
Germany's Lufthansa Airlines apologized this week after new details emerged from an incident involving more than 100 Orthodox Jewish passengers from the New York area who were blocked from boarding a flight.
"Lufthansa regrets the circumstances surrounding the decision to exclude the affected passengers from the flight, for which Lufthansa sincerely apologizes," the German airline said in a statement on Tuesday.
Insider previously reported that more than 100 passengers, all Jewish, were barred from taking the connecting flight from Frankfurt to Budapest last Wednesday following an alleged dispute over mask-wearing.
Passengers claimed, per the Jewish-interest newspaper Hamodia, that they were subject to collective punishment for the actions of "one or two" passengers, who also happened to be Jewish, who refused to wear masks.
At the time, Lufthansa confirmed that a "larger group" of passengers had been barred but issued no apology.
On Tuesday, after travel website Dan's Deals published a series of passenger-recorded videos, the airline appeared to change its tune.
"While Lufthansa is still reviewing the facts and circumstances of that day, we regret that the large group was denied boarding rather than limiting it to the non-compliant guests," said the statement.
"We apologize to all the passengers unable to travel on this flight, not only for the inconvenience but also for the offense caused and personal impact," it continued.
Lufthansa added that it has "zero tolerance for racism, antisemitism, and discrimination of any type" and will be engaging with affected passengers to "better understand" their concerns.
One video, shared on Dan's Deals, showed a Lufthansa worker telling a crowd that they would not be able to board because of an "operational reason" on the flight to Budapest. "You know why it was," the worker said.
Another video shows a person who appears to be a Lufthansa employee explaining to passenger Yitzy Halpern why he was barred, alongside many other passengers, from the connecting flight.
"Everyone has to pay for a couple," she said.
It was "Jewish people who were the mess, who made the problems," she added.
Lufthansa's treatment reeked of antisemitism, said Jewish passengers
—DansDeals (@DansDeals) May 9, 2022
Halpern, who said he wore a mask on the first leg of the journey, described the interaction in the video as racial profiling to "the highest degree I've ever witnessed in my life."
He told Insider that passengers from different parts of the tri-state area and who had booked their flights separately were lumped together based on nothing but their religion.
"We were not a large group," he said. "They made us a large group by singling us out as Jews."
Many of the Jewish travelers were on an annual pilgrimage to commemorate the Chasidic rabbi Rabbi Yeshayah Steiner, who was famed for his hospitality and died in 1925 in northeast Hungary.
Lufthansa's treatment of the Jewish passengers, Halpern alleged, reeked of antisemitism. "And in Germany, no less, where you would think they would have some sensitivity to antisemitism," he said. "I was extremely shocked and let down."
Yitzy Schmidt, who said he also wore a mask throughout the flight, told Insider that he was shocked to have been barred from boarding the flight. "How am I responsible for somebody else's actions?" he said.
"I was guilty by association, and that association is being an Orthodox Jew," Schmidt continued.
The experience left Schmidt so shaken, he said, that he turned back home instead of arranging transport to Hungary.
"I was broken. It was really, really difficult for me, and I just told the group that I can't continue," he said. "I just booked a United flight and went home."
Schmidt said he remains unsatisfied with Lufthansa's response, describing their apology as "just PR."
The Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish non-governmental organization, called it a "non-apology," noting that it "fails to admit to admit fault or identify the banned passengers as Jews."
On Wednesday, Lufthansa's CEO Carsten Spohr spoke to Berlin's chief rabbi to express his remorse over the incident. According to the Orthodox Jewish news service COL Live, Spohr told Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal that "antisemitism has no place at Lufthansa."