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There is a photo of Markus W. on the internet in which he can be seen smiling with a trophy in his hands. A slim, young man with soft features, standing relaxed among much stockier and older men, his face beaming.

The photo is from 2015 and was taken in El Puerto de Santa Maria in Andalusia, where W. had just won a cocktail mixing competition. Shortly after narrowly missing out on the overall victory in another important bartending competition, he now seemed to have finally reached the top. His hotel, the Westin in Leipzig, could be proud of him.

Everything is going well for W. – until Gil Ofarim shows up

W., who comes from Thuringia and often conveys rural romance in the descriptions of his drinks and raves about the taste of the pear stolen from the adjacent garden, continued his career in the traditional hotel colossus near the main station. W. rose from food and beverage supervisor to hotel manager responsible for VIPs.

Everything was going well – until Gil Ofarim suddenly stood in front of him in the Westin lobby in October 2021 and became terribly angry.

There were computer problems at check-in, causing a long queue. And Ofarim, feeling wronged, threatened to make a video about “what a horrible store” the Westin was. Ofarim muttered that the video would go “bam, bam, viral,” one of W.’s colleagues recalled that day.

“The colleagues were crying, it was dramatic”

“Bam, bam” – that’s what W. must have felt like next. Because Ofarim actually made a video that went through the roof. And at the center of the singer’s accusation was him, the hotel manager. Ofarim accused him of anti-Semitism. Ofarim claimed that W. refused to let him check in unless he took off his Star of David necklace.

Only now, two years later during the trial in Leipzig, W. publicly commented on what this accusation meant to him: W., now 35 years old, entered the courtroom in a gray suit. Ofarim’s allegations placed an “incredible burden” on colleagues at the hotel at the time, he said. As demonstrators gathered outside to demonstrate against anti-Semitism, the telephone rang constantly inside.

“It was unimaginable, that pressure. “The colleagues were crying and it was dramatic, very bad,” W. recalled during the trial. A death threat was received in his work mailbox and his full name and the link to his Instagram profile appeared on the Internet. W. stopped taking the train and removed his name from the doorbell sign.

Markus W. goes into hiding – and then has to go to the back office

Then the Leipzig Westin boss took W. out of the line of fire and took him to another hotel in the group in southern Germany “to breathe and rest.” Just like in the film, he and his partner were picked up by a limousine, W. described this time in the process. It felt like he had been in hiding for ten days. For a while, even friends and family didn’t know where he was.

When W. later returned to work in Leipzig, he was kept away from customers. For months he worked alone in the back office, initially at the hotel’s request because he was under investigation. But, W. said in court: To be honest, he also felt incapable of direct customer contact.

Sleep disorders to this day: “It always catches up with you”

To this day, he suffers from sleep disorders and receives psychological treatment. He no longer works at the Westin. The memorable Ofarim video played a major role in this:

After Gil Ofarim admitted in court that he had simply made up the accusations of anti-Semitism, W., according to his lawyer, was happy with the ‘end of the odyssey’ – and that ‘the truth could be brought to light’.

In a settlement, Ofarim and W. agreed that W. would receive compensation of an undisclosed amount. Ofarim apologized during the trial on Tuesday. W., described by trial observers as a fairly quiet man with defensive body language, accepted the apology.

(With material from the dpa press agency)