The head of Germany’s leading Jewish organisation on Tuesday warned people to avoid wearing Jewish skullcaps in major cities following a series of violent anti-Semitic attacks.

“I have to advise people to avoid showing themselves openly with a kippah in a big city setting in Germany, and to wear a baseball cap or something else to cover their head instead,” Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told German radio.

The warning comes after a videoed attack last week in central Berlin, in which two men wearing kippahs were set upon and whipped with a belt by a group of three men who shouted “Yahudi” — the Arabic word for Jew.

“Most of society realises we have reached a tipping point,” Mr Schuster said. “If we don’t oppose open anti-Semitism ultimately it will endanger our democracy. Because it's not just about anti-Semitism, it’s also about racism and xenophobia.”

The main suspect in last week’s attack is a 19-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker who has surrendered to police, and Angela Merkel has spoken of a “different form of anti-Semitism” in Germany coming from migrants of Arab descent.