Washington: Several minutes into intermission during a musical about Jewish traditions, a man stood up, raised him arm in a Nazi salute and started to shout.
Members of the audience said the man called out “Heil Hitler!” and “Heil Trump!” at the Wednesday-night performance of Fiddler on the Roof at Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore.
“People started running,” said Rich Scherr, who was in the audience. “The next thing I expected to hear was gunshots, frankly.”
The incident occurred just weeks after 11 people were gunned down at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in the deadliest attack on Jews in US. history.
The alleged gunman, Robert Bowers, is accused of saying that he wanted to “kill Jews” while he was in the synagogue.
Scherr posted a video online Wednesday, showing people at the Baltimore theatre standing, some shouting to “get out!”
After the salute, he said, “a lot of people started heading toward the exits.”
“I think with everything that’s been happen lately, people were scared,” Scherr said, referring to the synagogue massacre and the November 7 mass shooting at a bar in Southern California.
“People were saying that their hearts were beating really fast and there were a lot of ‘What’s wrong with this world?’ kind of comments.”
Read the article in The Sydney Morning Herald (Washington Post).