An American tourist is being lauded as a hero after bravely intervening in a violent attack on two local women while on the Dresden tram.
John Rudat, 21, selflessly jumped into the violent melee to protect two women who were being harassed by a pair of men, and suffered a gruesome slashing to his face in the process.
Rudat, a part-time model in New York City, made a return trip to Dresden to visit his former foreign exchange host family, and caught a ride on the local tram late Tuesday evening at the Neustädter Markt stop on line 7 toward Gorbitz, when an undocumented Syrian migrant, cut the victim, Rudat, with a large blade knife, causing severe facial injuries.
Police initially detained a 21-year-old Syrian national near the scene, who police have reason to believe was involved in the beating and punching of Rudat, but he was later released due to insufficient evidence.
The 21-year-old suspect and known drug dealer, “popularly known in the area, especially by police”, said one German law enforcement official, was “provisionally arrested and has been released by decision of the public prosecutor’s office”, police spokesman Thomas Geithner told Bild.
The other suspect however, who inflicted the injuries on Rudat, at some point slashed the victim during the physical altercation, and still remains at large.
Rudat took to social media after the attack, posting: “If y’all didn’t think Europe had an immigration problem, especially Germany, let me drop some knowledge on you…It is 11:57 a.m. right now. In three minutes, that man that assaulted that young woman will be released from custody. He’ll be released from custody because he’s not a citizen of Germany, he’s not a citizen of the EU for that matter,” Rudat said.
Rudat also stated: “He’s an immigrant, an illegal one, a drug dealer, and very popularly known here, especially by the police. This is not the first time this has happened. It’s not the first time that man has beaten up women, and it’s not the first time that the other guy decided to take a swing at my face with a six-inch blade.”
Rudat then asked the German people, “If Germans are held to that law and that structure, but these people could just come in, swing knives and hurt, abuse, terrorize and oppress citizens of Germany, then what do we do?”
The ongoing crime issue still remains top of mind for many German citizens. The co-Chair of the Right-wing, anti-immigrant AfD Party (Alternative für Deutschland), Alice Weidel, wrote on X that it is “a disastrous signal that such offenders interpret as a free pass instead of being immediately deported.”
In 2016, the German government of Angela Merkel began receiving a large influx of Syrian migrants during the disastrously brutal Syrian Civil War during the reign of the dictatorial President Bashar al-Assad. Numbers of asylum-seekers range from one to 1.2 million Syrian refugees who have funneled into the European nation, exhausting local resources, straining native customs, and contributing to a disturbing increase in the nation’s crime rate.
According to various outlets, increases in stabbings in Germany have gone up as much as 17% during the first half of 2025. Of the suspects responsible for these offenses, over one-third are non-German resident immigrants, reflecting a severe overrepresentation relative to their population.
Shortly after the incident, the United States Embassy in Germany issued a statement calling for swift and severe punishment for the perpetrators of this attack. “We urge German authorities to swiftly bring the perpetrators to justice and punish them to the fullest extent permitted by law. Safety is a collective responsibility—no one is safe until all are safe”, read the Embassy’s statement.
