By Toby Axelrod
BERLIN — A Jewish bakery owned by Polish and Israeli immigrants has shut its doors, citing a combination of economic pressure and anti-Semitic harassment.
Babka & Krantz opened in the Friedenau district in November, 2022 and added a second location in December, 2024, adjacent to the memorial at the site where the Nazis devised their “final solution” for the Jews during the Holocaust.
The second location at the House of the Wannsee Conference closed on Nov. 30, according to the bakery’s Instagram account, which directed followers to a statement from the memorial that has since been deleted from its website.
“We 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,” said the March 10 statement, which was preserved by the Internet Archive.
Now, the original location has closed, too.
Café owners and married couple Shahar Elkin and Marcin Liera-Elkin told friends and supporters that a construction site had blocked access to the bakery for more than a year, curbing foot traffic.
They also said in a formal stataeament that they had been affected when, after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, “the hatred reached Berlin as well.” The bakery was “subjected to constant verbal abuse” since that time, they said
Elkin and Liera-Elkin declined to comment for this story. “We and our family need to settle down and attend to a few matters,” they said.
Some would be customers in the neighborhood said they were already missing the Babka & Krantz.
“I was actually going there every day recently, after I found out they were closing. I found that really unfortunate,” 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 at the store, adding, “It makes me sad that things are this way. I’m trying not to cry.”
Babka & Krantz joins a list of 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.
• Tsion Café, an Ethiopian-Israeli eatery in New York City, recently ceased operating as a traditional restaurant.
• In Washington, DC, a local chain of Israeli restaurants closed down late last year following a boycott campaign.
Elkin came to Berlin in 2012 from his home city of Haifa, Israel, and in 2019 earned a master baker’s certificate, becoming the first Jewish master baker accepted into the Berlin Bakers’ Guild.
Liera-Elkin was born in Posen, Poland, and grew up in Berlin.
The couple said they were proud to be producing Jewish baked goods in a city with a resurging Jewish population.
“Our 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,” they said in their statement last week. “That’s why Berlin is such a miracle.”
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’ questions.
But the bakery catered not only to Jewish customers.
According to the owners, non-Jewish locals learned about Jewish culture at their tables.
“Our neighbors have seen that different people can eat together at one table and speak to each other,” they wrote in their goodbye note.
The business won professional recognition, earning a Craftsmanship Award sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs last year.
The couple said the good relations they had built as unofficial ambassadors of Jewish culture — introducing Berliners of all backgrounds to Jewish culinary specialties — were endangered when the construction site went up in their neighborhood, blocking the street view of their business. They lost customers and money, and their anxiety was increasingly visible on their Instagram account, where they chronicled their fruitless efforts to make their store accessible again.
Speaking to the Berliner Morgenpost in November, Liera-Elkin hinted that the two-pronged pressure — economic and harassment — might force them to close.
He reported that their vehicle had been vandalized and that they had “experienced numerous verbal and even physical attacks in our private life, received hate-filled letters and calls.” The couple even sent their daughter to stay elsewhere for a time.
“We 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,” he told the Morgenpost. “We really don’t know if Berlin is still the right place for us.”
