Holocaust survivor couple aged 87 and 86 confined to wheelchairs after 'anti-semitic' attack in own home

An elderly Jewish couple were brutally beaten and robbed in their own home by men claiming to be police officers. The couple, Diana and Shmuel Blog, aged 86 and 87 respectively, are now confined to wheelchairs following the assault in Amsterdam - the same city where Anne Frank and her family were in hiding from the Nazis and later died in a concentration camp.

Diana and Shmuel, who have been married for 56 years, both survived the Holocaust and Diana has scars on her arms from where guard dogs attacked her when she was at Auschwitz. She told YNet the ordeal began on 4 August when there was a loud knock on the door of their home.

"They knocked loudly on the door and said, 'open up, police,'" Diana told Ynet. She told her husband not to open the door but he did so anyway. They were confronted by two men dressed in black who burst in with guns, hitting the elderly couple and demanding jewellery. "I told them, 'don't hit my wife,"" said Shmuel, but the couple were tied up and the men even ripped jewellery from Diana's body.

"They called us 'dirty Jews' and said: 'You don't need your jewellery anymore. You've been wearing it for too long. Now it's all ours','" said Diana. "They wanted to chop off my finger because the rings didn't come off fast enough."

Diana was left with severe bruising which has left her in severe pain. Shmuel lost his vision and had a thigh bone broken. The couple spent a month in a rehabilitation centre. "Those bastards ruined our lives," said Shmuel.

Now Diana and Shmuel's son Emmanuel has issued a €10,000 reward for information leading to the men's arrest. The reward has grown as other Dutch citizens, shocked by the incident, have added their own money. Dutch police have issued descriptions of two suspects, but so far no-one has been apprehended.

Recorded incidents of anti-Semitism have been on the rise across Europe in recent years, with deadly attacks on a kosher supermarket in Paris, a museum in Belgium, synagogues and Jewish schools. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Europe wasn't safe for Jews and they should move to Israel, but Jewish leaders here have rejected the suggestion.