It was a scene straight out of Berlin in 1938: A man wrestles an elderly Jew to the ground and begins to pummel him. The man begs for mercy, but the beating continues. As the scene unfolds in the middle of a busy street, onlookers watch but no one comes to help.

That’s what happened early Sunday morning in Boro Park, Brooklyn, when Lipa Schwartz, 62, was attacked by Farrukh Afzal, a livery driver who reportedly mistook Schwartz for another chassidic man who had moments earlier touched his car and perhaps engaged in a verbal altercation with him. New York police are not treating the assault as a hate crime, though Schwartz said in an interview with CBS 2 News that Afzal, who lives in Staten Island, was yelling “Allah” during the attack.

“I start to fight back, because it’s either death or life,” Schwartz told the news station. “I can’t explain how angry he was. I screamed, ‘What do you want from me? Help me. Please.’ ”

Schwartz was on his way at shul at about 7:30 when Afzal screeched his car to a halt and bolted out of his vehicle at 13th Avenue and 46th Street. After being hit by Afzal, Schwartz managed to run away but then tripped in the street, where the beating continued. The pummeling only stopped when another chassidic man saw what was happening and intervened. At that point, Afzal got off Schwartz and chased after the second man. Video surveillance shows that the driver was then grabbed and held by passersby until the police department arrived. A father of nine, Schwartz sustained a split lip, a cut ear, and other injuries. At an arraignment on Sunday, Afzal was charged with assault and harassment and held on $15,000 bail.

Condemnation was swift from all corners of the Jewish community. In an impromptu press conference with Schwartz by his side, New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said Schwartz’s family is shaken. “The bottom line is, you have an innocent person who lives here, who is viciously and maliciously attacked in the streets. [It] is beyond comprehension. We want this person to be dealt with in the severest way by the DA.”

Avi Greenstein, CEO of the Boro Park Jewish Community Council, said the assault was shocking in part because attacks on Jews are extremely rare in the area. “The Boro Park community tends to have a wonderful relationship with other communities,” Greenstein said, “and we work on nurturing these relationships.” For instance, he said, in neighboring Midwood there is a large mosque but there has never been tension with the Muslim population. Greenstein said the Boro Park leadership will further discuss what happened, but for now, his only hope is that residents can go on living the peaceful life they’ve come to expect. “With Hashem’s help, we’ll never deal with a situation like this again.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 731)