Heiko Maas, Germany’s Foreign Minister, said on Wednesday that an anti-Semitic remark received by a Jewish artist at a Leipzig hotel horrified him and that such behavior had no place in Germany.

Gil Ofarim, 39, made national news on Tuesday evening when he posted a video on social media accusing the Westin Leipzig hotel in eastern Germany of refusing to serve him because he was wearing a Star of David necklace.

The hotel issued a statement saying it was disturbed and alarmed by the event and that two staff had been suspended.

According to the transcript of a speech, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas remarked on Wednesday evening, “I am startled by the anti-Semitic slur that the artist Gil Ofarim received.”

“Every day, many Jews in our nation are subjected to anti-Semitism. Leipzig is not an isolated instance “He went on to say that Germans have to combat all forms of anti-Semitism.

“In our country, anti-Semitism has no place.”

“I am dumbfounded, I don’t know what to say,” Ofarim said in a photo that purported to show him outside the hotel, describing how he was ordered to take off his Star of David pendant if he wanted to be served in a long check-in line.

A police spokesperson in Leipzig said the description of the events by one of the hotel employees differed from the musician’s account and that he had filed a defamation complaint.

Several hundred people, some wrapped in the Israeli flag, gathered outside the hotel late on Tuesday to protest against anti-Semitism.

Politicians have warned that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise in Germany. The issue remains highly sensitive more than 70 years after the end of the Nazi Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed.

Maas said Germany was spending more than 1 billion euros in the next four years on tackling right-wing radicalism, racism and anti-Semitism. “We must not look away if someone is subjected to an anti-Semitic insult,” he said.