German Chancellor Friedrich Merz attends a joint press conference with Canada’s Prime Minister (unseen) after bilateral talks at the Chancellery on August 26, 2025 in Berlin.
Tobias Schwarz / AFP
The victim said the incident revealed Europe’s “immigration problem.”
John Rudat, the American tourist in Germany who was stabbed in the face on Sunday after bravely defending a young woman from two men who were harassing her on a tram, says he hopes that Friedrich Merz’s administration finally “takes decisive steps to take its citizens’ concerns and security fears [surrounding migration] seriously.”
Reports suggest there were two attackers and that both are Syrian nationals. One, who is understood to have started the fight with punches, was arrested but soon after released—as though throwing fists is not bad enough—while the actual stabber is still at large.
Rudat, whose modelling career has likely been ruined as a result of the attack, told German weekly Junge Freiheit that “people in the U.S. are aware of Germany’s challenges with migration, partly because we have experienced similar problems ourselves.” He added that dealing with the issue—seriously, rather than simply with words—is “always about protecting … citizens and preventing senseless crime.”
Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s special envoy for ‘special missions,’ also responded to the attack by urging Merz’s team to do more to stop migrant crime:
Friedrich Merz must understand that the German people are sick and tired of this weak and woke response.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Germany said national authorities must “swiftly bring the perpetrators to justice and punish them to the fullest extent permitted by law.”
Safety is a collective responsibility—no one is safe until all are safe.
The early release of one of the alleged attackers, whom police let go because there was no evidence he carried out the stabbing, has already suggested to Rudat that officials are not taking this case—and others like it—seriously enough, because if someone “could do this to the people of Germany and then just get released 12 hours later … where is the law? Where is the structure?”
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
