Born in the Czech city of Brno in 1918, where he lived until the beginning of World War II, Eric Vogel was a jazz enthusiast and accomplished amateur trumpet player. Although official Nazi propaganda denounced jazz as a degenerate art form associated with Jews and blacks, a number of SS officers nonetheless were avid listeners. One such officer had encountered Vogel at a jazz club and, after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, took him under his protection. Amanda Petrusich describes what followed:

On Saturday, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed a passerby in Jerusalem, and was then shot dead by two border guards. As the second bullet hit him when he was already on the ground, some Israelis have accused the guards of wrongdoing; a misleadingly edited viral video has also brought more attention to the incident. The editors of the Jerusalem Post comment: