‘This $50 is for your grave, you f***ing Jew’

A Jewish shoe repairer in Melbourne says a customer refused to pay because she “would not pay a filthy Jew”, then threw cash at him for his grave and his funeral.

The shoemaker, who wants to be identified only as Dmitry, reported the case to the Ant-Defamation Commission. He told the ADC Commission’s chairman, Dr Dvir Abramovich, that the woman had come into his shop, in the upmarket suburb of Brighton, on 16 October to collect two pairs of repaired shoes, including a pair of designer boots. She examined them for faults, found none, put them in her bag and refused to pay the agreed $100.

He followed her to a nearby shop and asked to be paid. He says she responded that she would not pay a “filthy stinky Jew”. She later followed him towards the shopping centre, shouting in Russian and Ukrainian: “Go, Jew, to your f***ing Sara!”

A security guard at the plaza intervened and warned her that he would call police if she did not pay. According to Dmitry, she laughed at the guard, then threw a $50 note at him, saying: “This $50 is for your grave, you f***ing Jew.” A second note followed: “One more for your funeral.” She called him a “filthy Jew” again before leaving with a receipt.

Dmitry said the abuse took him straight back to his childhood in Kyiv, “when being Jewish meant being singled out, humiliated and abused by other boys at school”.

“That evening, I came home shaking,” he said. “This was never simply about a $100 shoe repair. It was about being told that I was not worthy of payment because I was Jewish.”

His first instinct was to stay silent. “I thought the best thing to do was to keep quiet and move on,” he said. “I want to be able to go to work, serve my customers and live my life without being humiliated or threatened because of who I am.”