Three elderly Jewish women were expelled from the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid after being harassed by other museum visitors for their Jewish symbols, including a Magen Dovid necklace and an Israeli flag.

The three women, Israeli tourists, including a Holocaust survivor of Hungarian origin, visited the museum over the weekend. They caught the attention of several visitors, who acted with rage toward the women’s Jewish symbols and called them various epithets, including “crazy child killers.”

What happened next is even more disturbing. Instead of the museum staff taking action against the assailants, they ordered a security guard to expel the Jewish women from the museum! The guard escorted the women out while telling them to hide their Jewish symbols, claiming that wearing Jewish symbols in the museum is against the law and that “some visitors were disturbed that they are Jewish.” No action was taken against the museum visitors who verbally attacked the elderly women.

The Spanish Okdiario news site, which first reported the incident, noted that the museum is funded by the government and that “the museum staff share responsibility for this racist harassment.”

The Jewish women were accompanied on their visit by a Spanish companion who severely criticized the treatment the women were subject to, adding that there is no law banning religious symbols or flags and that the demand therefore constituted a violation of the law in an official building of the Spanish government by an employee of a government-affiliated agency.

She added, “The women were wearing completely standard Jewish symbols that are not offensive at all. It is like someone wearing a shirt of their favorite soccer team or carrying their national flag. But from the moment we arrived and they noticed the Jewish symbols, the museum staff treated us with hostility.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)