The second location at the House of the Wannsee Conference closed on Nov. 30, according to the bakery\u2019s Instagram account, which directed followers to a statement from the memorial that has since been deleted from its website.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe regret the verbal abuse and the difficult situation to which the managing directors and employees of BABKA & KRANTZ Meisterkonditorei were exposed and express our full understanding for the termination of the cooperation under these circumstances,\u201d said the March 10 statement, which was preserved by the Internet Archive.<\/p>\n
Now, the original location has closed, too.<\/p>\n
![\"Occupation](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/689892.jpeg\"\/)
Occupation Against Antisemitism occupied a building at the Technical University in Berlin (credit: Screenshot\/Instagram)<\/p>\n
Caf\u00e9 owners and married couple Shahar Elkin and Marcin Liera-Elkin said in a statement to friends and supporters that a construction site had blocked access to the bakery for more than a year, curbing foot traffic.<\/p>\n
But they also said they had been affected when, after Hamas<\/a>\u2019 Oct. 7, 2023, attack<\/a> on Israel, \u201cthe hatred reached Berlin<\/a> as well.\u201d The bakery was \u201csubjected to constant verbal abuse\u201d since that time, they said in their statement, which has circulated on social media.<\/p>\n Elkin and Liera-Elkin declined to comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, saying they were turning down all media inquiries for the time being. \u201cWe and our family need to settle down and attend to a few matters,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n Some would-be customers in the neighborhood said they were already missing the Babka & Krantz on Sunday.<\/p>\n \u201cI was actually going there every day recently, after I found out they were closing. I found that really unfortunate,\u201d said Rebecca, who declined to share her last name. She said she had heard about both the economic impact of the construction and about harassment that had taken place at the store, adding, \u201cIt makes me sad that things are this way. I\u2019m trying not to cry.\u201d<\/p>\n Babka & Krantz joins a growing list of beloved eateries that have cited the aftermath of Oct. 7 in announcing their closures. Also in Berlin, the hummus bar Kanaan, which was jointly owned by an Israeli and a Palestinian, closed in March after experiencing protests. An Israeli restaurant in Portugal cited harassment when it announced its closure in January, as did an Ethiopian-Israeli eatery in New York City that recently ceased operating as a traditional restaurant. In Washington, D.C., a local chain of Israeli restaurants closed down late last year following a boycott campaign.<\/p>\n Elkin came to Berlin in 2012 from his home city of Haifa, Israel, and in 2019 earned a master baker\u2019s certificate, becoming the first Jewish master baker accepted into the Berlin Bakers\u2019 Guild. Liera-Elkin was born in Posen, Poland, and grew up in Berlin.<\/p>\n The couple said they were proud to be producing Jewish baked goods in a city with a resurging Jewish population.<\/p>\n \u201cOur families come from cities with a vibrant Jewish life and a formative culture of debate. Today, few or no Jews live in these places anymore,\u201d they said in their statement last week. \u201cThat\u2019s why Berlin is such a miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n Germany is home to an estimated 200,000 Jews, including many from the former Soviet Union and a large contingent of Israeli expats. The bakery catered to them, offering special menus for Jewish holidays, devising baked goods that reflect diverse Jewish traditions, and even bringing in a rabbi to answer visitors\u2019 questions.<\/p>\n Bakery attracted non-Jewish locals<\/p>\n But the bakery catered not only to Jewish customers. According to the owners, non-Jewish locals learned about Jewish culture at their tables. \u201cOur neighbors have seen that different people can eat together at one table and speak to each other,\u201d they wrote in their goodbye note.<\/p>\n The business also won professional recognition, earning a Craftsmanship Award sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs last year.<\/p>\n The couple said the good relations they had built as unofficial ambassadors of Jewish culture \u2013 introducing Berliners of all backgrounds to Jewish culinary specialties \u2013 were endangered when the construction site went up in their neighborhood, blocking the street view of their business. They lost customers and money, they said, and their anxiety was increasingly visible on their Instagram account, where they chronicled their fruitless efforts to make their story accessible again.<\/p>\n Speaking to the Berliner Morgenpost in November, Liera-Elkin hinted that the two-pronged pressure \u2014 economic and harassment \u2014 might force them to close. He reported that their vehicle had been vandalized and that they had \u201cexperienced numerous verbal and even physical attacks in our private life, received hate-filled letters and calls.\u201d The couple said they had even sent their daughter to stay elsewhere for a time.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are just a bakery that wants to offer great products. But now we are only confronted with problems and politics that leave us in despair,\u201c he told the Morgenpost. \u201cWe really don\u2018t know if Berlin is still the right place for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Jewish bakery owned by Polish and Israeli immigrants in Berlin has shut its doors, citing a combination…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[9930,19705,112,8193,190,22777],"class_list":["post-103235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-antisemitism","tag-bakery","tag-berlin","tag-diaspora","tag-germany","tag-jewish"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116717900985871033","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}