Wuppertal Anti-Semitism
Policemen stand outside a synagogue in Wuppertal, western Germany, where three men attempted an arson attack. OLIVER BERG/AFP/Getty Images

A German teenager has been arrested on suspicion of firebombing a synagogue which was attacked by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Police in the western town of Wuppertal say the 18-year-old man was one of three attackers who threw several Molotov cocktails at the entrance of the building.

Authorities were alerted about the early morning incident by a local resident who spotted a fire.

Police said no one was injured and the building suffered limited damages. The other two suspects managed to flee.

The same synagogue was burnt to the ground by the Nazis during the infamous Night of Broken Glass in 1938, The Local reported.

The attack was the last in a series of recent anti-Semitic acts that have worried Jewish communities across Europe, drawing the condemnation of the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Italy.

"Anti-Semitic rhetoric and hostility against Jews, attacks on people of Jewish belief and synagogues have no place in our societies," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, France's Laurent Fabius and Italy's Federica Mogherini said in a joint statement earlier this month.

Israeli-Palestine tensions have strongly reverberated across the continent, sending hundreds of thousands into the streets to protest against the conflict in Gaza.

Anti-Semitic chants and some episodes of violence have however marred what has been a largely pro-peace movement.

A Frankfurt Rabbi said an anonymous caller rang him up to say he would kill 30 local Jews if his family in Gaza was harmed.

In France, a number of synagogues were attacked and in Italy's capital of Rome anti-Semitic graffiti and flyers have defaced shops and walls in the historical Jewish San Giovanni neighbourhood.

Germany