Europe’s open-borders catastrophe has claimed another casualty. Last weekend, an American tourist was stabbed in the face by a man suspected to be a Syrian migrant in Dresden. John Rudat, a 21-year-old newly qualified paramedic and part-time model, was brutally assaulted when he stepped in to protect two women who were being harassed on a tram. Rudat got into a heated argument with the two male passengers, who first beat him and then later returned to attack him with a knife.
Police arrested one man following the incident, a Syrian migrant with previous convictions for theft and assault. He was thought to be one of Rudat’s attackers, but not the man who actually wielded the knife. The stabber himself is yet to be apprehended.
In a video posted to Instagram, a heavily bandaged Rudat claimed that his attacker is a notorious drug dealer in the area and is already known to the police. The other suspect was released from jail just 12 hours later because “there were insufficient grounds for detention” and “the knife attack cannot be attributed to him.”
In a refreshing change from the usual ‘don’t-look-back-in-anger’ type responses from victims of migrant crime, Rudat took to social media to explicitly attack Germany’s lax immigration laws. “If y’all didn’t think Europe had an immigration problem, especially Germany, let me drop some knowledge on you,” Rudat said on Instagram. “It is 11:57 a.m. right now. In three minutes, that man that assaulted that young woman will be released from custody. He’ll be released from custody because he’s not a citizen of Germany, he’s not a citizen of the EU for that matter.” He went on to criticise the fact that “these people could just come in, swing knives and hurt, abuse, terrorise and oppress citizens of Germany.” The U.S. Embassy in Germany has echoed these concerns, calling on the German authorities to bring Rudat’s attackers to justice. “Safety is a collective responsibility—no one is safe until all are safe,” the statement said. Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s envoy for ‘special missions,’ also came down hard on the German authorities’ lack of action. Writing on X, he said, “Friedrich Merz must understand that the German people are sick and tired of this weak and woke response.”
John Rudat is just the latest victim of Germany’s open-borders policy. In February, a Spanish tourist was stabbed by a Syrian asylum seeker at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, leaving him severely injured and in a coma. The Syrian man later revealed he had been motivated by a desire to “kill Jews.” One month before that, an Afghan national had allegedly targeted a kindergarten group in a Bavarian park, killing a two-year-old Moroccan boy, as well as a German man who tried to intervene. Another Afghan man went to trial earlier this year after he allegedly attacked an anti-Islamist political rally in Mannheim last year. Motivated by Islamist extremism, the man is thought to have injured five attendees at the rally and killed a police officer. Not to mention the Solingen terror attack last year, in which three people died at the hands of a suspected Syrian Islamist, or the purposeful car ramming by an alleged Afghan terrorist in Munich last year, which left a two-year-old girl and her mother dead and 37 people injured.
The whole picture is equally grim. Germany is experiencing an alarming rise in violent crime, and many public spaces no longer feel safe. Migrants are overrepresented as perpetrators in practically every category of violent crime in Germany. In knife-related crimes, foreigners accounted for 37% of suspects, despite making up 15% of the total population. Syrians specifically comprised the largest number of suspects in knife crime cases.
Nor is the carnage restricted to Germany. Across the border, Austria is suffering its own knife-crime crisis, recording the highest-ever number of such crimes this year. As in Germany, foreigners are massively over-represented among the perpetrators of violent crimes, according to unofficial prison statistics. Over half of inmates in Austrian prisons are non-nationals, while accounting for just one-fifth of the general population.
In the Netherlands, the story is the same. Migrants make up twice the proportion of violent- and sex-crime suspects than they do of the overall population. Here, a 17-year-old girl was stabbed to death just last week by a suspected refugee. The girl was cycling home from an evening out in Amsterdam when she was attacked by a man thought to be residing at a local asylum centre. The man is also a suspect in a separate rape case.
John Rudat is unique in that—aside from thankfully living to tell the tale—he has a government that is willing to stand behind him. The same cannot be said for Germans and many other Europeans who fall victim to migrant crime. Their governments are quite happy to see them as ‘acceptable’ collateral damage in the open-borders project. German politicians, for example, are still determined to ignore the consequences of uncontrolled migration. This week, the former socialist mayor of Frankfurt (Oder), Martin Patzelt, dismissed the prospect of tightening border controls as “nonsense” and suggested that young Germans should take a year abroad in the home countries of refugees to “create an understanding of the problem.” For Patzelt, it apparently isn’t enough that Germans accept hordes of undocumented young men into their country—they ought to send their children off to the very countries these refugees have fled from.
It’s time for Germans—and all Europeans—to get seriously angry. Governments are failing in their most basic duty of protecting their own citizens, allowing asylum seekers to take priority over natives. In attempting to create a safe space for refugees fleeing war, persecution, and disasters, European states have ended up turning their own countries into hotbeds of sexual assault, violent crime, and terrorism.
At this rate, Germany will be more known for mass rapes and terror attacks than for beer and Lederhosen. Western Europe is already on the way to being globally shunned for its lax approach to crime and border control while ruthlessly persecuting right-wing dissidents. Europe can be safe again only when its leaders start taking their duty to protect citizens seriously.
The Human Cost of Open Borders
People pay their respects at a makeshift memorial for the victims of a knife attack, on January 24, 2025 in Aschaffenburg, western Germany. A knife attacker killed a two-year-old child and a man on January 22, 2025 in a public park in Aschaffenburg, where police arrested an Afghan man as the main suspect.
Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP
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Europe’s open-borders catastrophe has claimed another casualty. Last weekend, an American tourist was stabbed in the face by a man suspected to be a Syrian migrant in Dresden. John Rudat, a 21-year-old newly qualified paramedic and part-time model, was brutally assaulted when he stepped in to protect two women who were being harassed on a tram. Rudat got into a heated argument with the two male passengers, who first beat him and then later returned to attack him with a knife.
Police arrested one man following the incident, a Syrian migrant with previous convictions for theft and assault. He was thought to be one of Rudat’s attackers, but not the man who actually wielded the knife. The stabber himself is yet to be apprehended.
In a video posted to Instagram, a heavily bandaged Rudat claimed that his attacker is a notorious drug dealer in the area and is already known to the police. The other suspect was released from jail just 12 hours later because “there were insufficient grounds for detention” and “the knife attack cannot be attributed to him.”
In a refreshing change from the usual ‘don’t-look-back-in-anger’ type responses from victims of migrant crime, Rudat took to social media to explicitly attack Germany’s lax immigration laws. “If y’all didn’t think Europe had an immigration problem, especially Germany, let me drop some knowledge on you,” Rudat said on Instagram. “It is 11:57 a.m. right now. In three minutes, that man that assaulted that young woman will be released from custody. He’ll be released from custody because he’s not a citizen of Germany, he’s not a citizen of the EU for that matter.” He went on to criticise the fact that “these people could just come in, swing knives and hurt, abuse, terrorise and oppress citizens of Germany.” The U.S. Embassy in Germany has echoed these concerns, calling on the German authorities to bring Rudat’s attackers to justice. “Safety is a collective responsibility—no one is safe until all are safe,” the statement said. Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s envoy for ‘special missions,’ also came down hard on the German authorities’ lack of action. Writing on X, he said, “Friedrich Merz must understand that the German people are sick and tired of this weak and woke response.”
John Rudat is just the latest victim of Germany’s open-borders policy. In February, a Spanish tourist was stabbed by a Syrian asylum seeker at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, leaving him severely injured and in a coma. The Syrian man later revealed he had been motivated by a desire to “kill Jews.” One month before that, an Afghan national had allegedly targeted a kindergarten group in a Bavarian park, killing a two-year-old Moroccan boy, as well as a German man who tried to intervene. Another Afghan man went to trial earlier this year after he allegedly attacked an anti-Islamist political rally in Mannheim last year. Motivated by Islamist extremism, the man is thought to have injured five attendees at the rally and killed a police officer. Not to mention the Solingen terror attack last year, in which three people died at the hands of a suspected Syrian Islamist, or the purposeful car ramming by an alleged Afghan terrorist in Munich last year, which left a two-year-old girl and her mother dead and 37 people injured.
The whole picture is equally grim. Germany is experiencing an alarming rise in violent crime, and many public spaces no longer feel safe. Migrants are overrepresented as perpetrators in practically every category of violent crime in Germany. In knife-related crimes, foreigners accounted for 37% of suspects, despite making up 15% of the total population. Syrians specifically comprised the largest number of suspects in knife crime cases.
Nor is the carnage restricted to Germany. Across the border, Austria is suffering its own knife-crime crisis, recording the highest-ever number of such crimes this year. As in Germany, foreigners are massively over-represented among the perpetrators of violent crimes, according to unofficial prison statistics. Over half of inmates in Austrian prisons are non-nationals, while accounting for just one-fifth of the general population.
In the Netherlands, the story is the same. Migrants make up twice the proportion of violent- and sex-crime suspects than they do of the overall population. Here, a 17-year-old girl was stabbed to death just last week by a suspected refugee. The girl was cycling home from an evening out in Amsterdam when she was attacked by a man thought to be residing at a local asylum centre. The man is also a suspect in a separate rape case.
John Rudat is unique in that—aside from thankfully living to tell the tale—he has a government that is willing to stand behind him. The same cannot be said for Germans and many other Europeans who fall victim to migrant crime. Their governments are quite happy to see them as ‘acceptable’ collateral damage in the open-borders project. German politicians, for example, are still determined to ignore the consequences of uncontrolled migration. This week, the former socialist mayor of Frankfurt (Oder), Martin Patzelt, dismissed the prospect of tightening border controls as “nonsense” and suggested that young Germans should take a year abroad in the home countries of refugees to “create an understanding of the problem.” For Patzelt, it apparently isn’t enough that Germans accept hordes of undocumented young men into their country—they ought to send their children off to the very countries these refugees have fled from.
It’s time for Germans—and all Europeans—to get seriously angry. Governments are failing in their most basic duty of protecting their own citizens, allowing asylum seekers to take priority over natives. In attempting to create a safe space for refugees fleeing war, persecution, and disasters, European states have ended up turning their own countries into hotbeds of sexual assault, violent crime, and terrorism.
At this rate, Germany will be more known for mass rapes and terror attacks than for beer and Lederhosen. Western Europe is already on the way to being globally shunned for its lax approach to crime and border control while ruthlessly persecuting right-wing dissidents. Europe can be safe again only when its leaders start taking their duty to protect citizens seriously.
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