…you do not need intellectual sophistication in order to realize: The ancient ghost Judaeophobia is alive and well in Europe. Racist notes, insulting emails, anti-Semitic slogans at football matches or just remarks in passing, graffiti, and the desecration of memorials and cemeteries are obvious symptoms.
Germany today
Thus, on May 1, 2019, in Frankfurt am Main a Jewish businessman was called a “shitty Jew”. On May 6 in Hamm, the Left-Wing Youth of North Rhine-Westphalia demanded on Facebook the complete annihilation of the state of Israel. On May 10, an Israeli flag was burned in Berlin at the memorial site for victims of a terrorist attack. On May 18, the political party “The Right” played sound recordings of a multiple-convicted Holocaust denier in front of the synagogue in Pforzheim. On the same day, the house of a Jewish couple in Hemmingen, Lower Saxony was targeted with an arson attack.
On June 1, a young Jewess in Berlin-Charlottenburg was told: “Actually, Hitler should return and kill the rest as well.” On July 13, in Freiburg, a man harassed the chairwoman of the Jewish community: “I’m not surprised that Hitler gassed you, you idiots.” And: “Off with you! Otherwise I’ll kill you, you whore!” On August 10, a man with a Star of David chain was insulted by employees at Berlin’s Tegel Airport and thrown off a flight. Three days later, a Jew in Charlottenburg was knocked to the ground by two men. Eyewitnesses did not intervene, according to the victim.
In September, a young man talking in front of a discotheque in Hebrew is slapped in the face in Berlin. Despite a ban on performing for two anti-Semitic rappers, 500 people take part in an anti-Israel rally in the German capital in the same month. In a football match in Frankfurt am Main, the Israeli referee is called “Judensau”.
When a heavily armed man tried to intrude into a synagogue in Halle on the Saale on October 9, no Jewish person who knows Germany was truly surprised. The plan of the violent offender failed because the Jewish community had taken good security precautions. But two passers-by were murdered.
Anyone who wears a kippah or a Star of David in the German public of the 21st century, speaks Hebrew, shows an Israeli flag or otherwise shows his attachment to the Jewish people, must expect to be offended, insulted, threatened, stoned or beaten. In 2019, Jews in the Federal Republic of Germany were denied access to restaurants and they got to see the Hitler salute.
