Anti-Semitic Signs In Hotel Say Jewish Guests Must Shower Before Swimming

A Jewish family staying at a hotel in the Swiss Alps encountered more than one sign at the facility that appeared to be anti-Semitic. One note was placed on the refrigerator at the Aparthaus Paradeis hotel, while the other was tacked to the entrance to the hotel pool.

“To our Jewish guests: Please take a shower before you go swimming and although [sic] after swimming,” the sign by the pool read. “If you break the rules, I’m forced to cloes [sic] the swimming pool for you. Thank you for understanding: Ruth Thomann.”

Another sign on a refrigerator hotel stated that Jewish guests were only allowed to use it during certain hours to avoid bothering hotel staff.

“After we made the reservation, we spoke to a woman who was very nice to us. We told her that we are Jewish and she said that not many Jews stay at the hotel,” the father of the family staying at the hotel told Israel’s Channel 2.

“We were shocked,” he said of encountering the first sign. “None of us went to the refrigerator because we didn’t want there to be an argument but the day after that, the sign at the entrance to the pool suddenly appeared and that was a real embarrassment.”

The man said he attempted to contact the hotel’s manager but she was not at the hotel.

“It’s very strange,” he said. “Even the goyim can’t understand [why these signs are here]. There is a really nice group of Jews here from all over the world — there are barely any Israelis. Everyone is acting really respectfully. This is a very weird phenomenon. This is anti-Semitism that we had never been exposed to before.”

The hotel’s owner, Ruth Thomann, however, said the entire situation was a misunderstanding caused by her using the “wrong words.”

“I made a note and I used the wrong words,” she told The Algemeiner Monday. “I wrote ‘for our Jewish guests,’ and one of them wrote me an email asking me to take it down.”

Thomann said she put the note by the pool because “some of these guests went swimming with clothes on, with T-shirts and didn’t take a shower.”

As for the refrigerator note, Thomann told The Algemeiner that the hotel allowed Jewish guests traveling with Kosher food the privilege of storing such food in refrigerators in the hotel’s kitchen.

“The refrigerators in the rooms are small,” she explained. “So I told them, ‘You can store some small things with our stuff, but don’t go in every time.”

Thomann said she was absolutely not anti-Semitic and that Jewish guests frequented her hotel.

“We have lots of Jewish guests and they have been coming here for forty years,” she said. “I would not take Jewish guests if I had a problem with them.”