Earlier this morning, YWN posted a story regarding a restaurant in Belgium which threw a man out because he was wearing a Yarmulka. A reader of YWN wrote an email to the restaurant to voice his outrage – and received a response. He was kind enough to share his letter AND the response he received from the restaurant.
Dear Sirs,
I am writing to you to express my outrage at the way your staff have treated a customer by the name of Marcel Kalmann. You will be aware that you have a moral and ethical duty to treat each and every customer, client or supplier with an equal amount of courtesy.
It is clear that you decided to go against the law and exclude Prof Kalmann from your premises on racial grounds. It is the intention of both the Jewish community in Europe and the USA to file a formal complaint to the Belgian authorities at the highest level.
In the mean time I would invite you to set the record straight for all future Jewish customers who may want to visit your establishments, wherever they are located.
I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
(Name removed by YWN)
RESPONSE FROM RESTURANT [AS WRITTEN]:
Dear Sir,
Normally we decided not to respond to all the hate-mail we get becouse 90 % of them are anonymous. As your mail is undersigned I would to answer.
It is true Mr Kalmann visited our restaurant, and it is also true there has been an incident between mr Kalmann and one of the waitors. This incident was base don a discussion about the price of his coffee.
This can be checked in the police-files. It was not at all a racist incident.
In our restaurants we employ over one hundred people. 40 % of them are not Belgian, are not catholic, do not have the same color of skin as we do, some of them do not even speak or understand our language (Flemish) and we have no problem with this. The biggest part of our clients are tourists which means they have a different nationality, different religions, different colors of skins, speak different languages, … and we have no problem with this.
We always tell our staff to respect all our clients, rich or poor, white or black, catholic or muslim or jew or … and we never had any problems of this kind. We also expect our clients to show some respect for our staff who works very hard. Unfortunately we sometimes have clients with a different opinion in this matter, but we always try to remain calm and if there sometimes is a discussion we try to solve the problem by speaking to the persons. Very often we find out there is no real problem but only some misunderstanding because of the peoples different habbits and problem is solved. We never got the occasion to speak to mr Kalmann to try to defend ourselves or to solve the problem because he went directly to the police.
I can assure you we regret this. I have read on the site of ‘joods actueel’ that the waitor told if mr Kalmann want this he would like to appoligise to him. Why doesn’t he never got the occasion to do this? It looks to us somebody needed a reason to create a problem and so they did. Really grown up people should try to solve a problem (if there is one) by having a good conversation.
I hope this misunderstanding is solved quick and in a correct way.
Sincerely,
All the staff and direction of restaurant ‘Le Panier d’Or’
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14 Responses
moral of the story:lets just stick to drinking our coffee in our own exclusive places (i.e. your local b.m.),not expect respect from our colored or not fellow citizens
now I’m really foncused
Quote:
“I can assure you we regret this. I have read on the site of ‘joods actueel’ that the waitor told if mr Kalmann want this he would like to appoligise to him. Why doesn’t he never got the occasion to do this? It looks to us somebody needed a reason to create a problem and so they did. Really grown up people should try to solve a problem (if there is one) by having a good conversation.”
It appears to me that if the restaurant really is against such behavior they should fire the waiter, not just offering apologies.
It’s hard to tell what the real story was. Just curious – most stores have a camera. If this was captured on film, we can know what really happened.
So what did this fellow do that got him thrown out?
You know that if this fellow was of color Rev Al Sharpton would have been there making a protest. Why cant Jews stick up for themselves like this
common who would believe such garbage from the owner himself. Of course he would try to defend the waiter, and even if kallman was looking for a reason to complain, he should not have been able to find a reason to complain. Its pashut that the waiter is right and Reb Kallman is wrong
his point is that were always so qick to assume everythung is anti semitisim with out checking out the whole story. its like the cop who gives you a ticket os an anti semite even though you were going 80 in a 55 zone.
Shmeck: No, Rev Al Sharpton would not be protesting. Its a different country.
Plus, Us Jews are 2 busy trying to get each other out of business over tznious pictures down the block from our yeshivos. When would we have time to protest something of substance?
the truth, your not alowed to beleave anything till your REALY get to hear both sides…
but my 1st reaction was a story my father told me when he saw a old satmere coming to put a querter in thr meater & he saw its broken , so he was talking under his breath in yidish “DOES IS ALES DI TZIYONIM….”
Got it?
10,
Silly comparison. The cop isnt alluding to you in a degrading way with racist attacks, he is just issuing a ticket. In this case, the waiter made antisemitic slurs,,,,,
Normally we decided not to respond to all the hate-mail we get becouse 90 % of them are anonymous. As your mail is undersigned I would to answer.
If they are such nice people why are they always getting hate mail?
This quick response obviously is to create confusion as this restaurant really is afraid of possible repercussions. Why aren´t they going in to the actual problem in the first place: the argument? Maybe because asking three times the usual price for a cup of coffee is normal?
A few comments of someone living in Bruges. The more we get to know about this case, the more it gets very strange. After further investigation the police found out that it wasn’t the first time that mr Kalman complained about being ill-treated. But it seemed he made the story up! But now the store got out, and went international. The problem is that bad news travels faster than good news. So it would be almost impossible to get the true story to “wash” away the first story, which doesn’t hold any truth in it. And that, I have to say, makes us sad.