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‘We Are No Longer Safe Here’

Details of a troubling report about anti-Semitism in Germany

by
Jonathan Zalman
January 20, 2016
Boris Roessler/AFP/Getty Images
Members of the Jewish community in Mainz, in western Germany, carry Torah scrolls during a ceremony to inaugurate a new synagogue, September 3, 2010. Boris Roessler/AFP/Getty Images
Boris Roessler/AFP/Getty Images
Members of the Jewish community in Mainz, in western Germany, carry Torah scrolls during a ceremony to inaugurate a new synagogue, September 3, 2010. Boris Roessler/AFP/Getty Images

On Tuesday, Patrick Gensing, a journalist for German website Tagesschau.de, published a report that explored the question: Are Jews in Germany safe? In short, he wrote, they feel threatened.

The article, which was first picked up by The Jerusalem Post, quotes Daniel Killy, a spokesman for the Jewish community in Hamburg, who said, “We are no longer safe here.” Reported the Post:

He said the disintegration of state power, excesses of the extreme right-wing, the loss of political credibility, and “the terrible fear of naming Islamism as such” have contributed to an insecure environment for Jews. Hamburg’s Jewish community has nearly 2,500 members.

The article, written in German, details a number of recent instances of anti-Semitism in Germany, including in Wuppertal where the Jewish population is about 2,000.

Gensing wrote about a “wave of hatred” at the “hate-filled demonstrations against the Gaza War” in 2014. An Israeli couple were attacked during that period. Also, three Palestinians attempted to torch a Wuppertal city synagogue–one that had previously been burned by Germans in 1938. A local court sentenced the Palestinians to probation and stated that the act of arson was not anti-Semitic because the men sought to draw attention to the Gaza war.



The regional court on Monday imposed a more severe sentence on the men–Ismael A., 29, Muhammad E., 25 and Jamil A., 19. German media protects perpetrators’ and victims’ privacy by not citing their full last names. Two of the men are from the West Bank and the other is from the Gaza Strip. It is unclear what the increased punishment is.



According to a Monday [Der] Spiegel article, the approximately 2,000 Jews in Wuppertal no longer feel safe. The head of the Wuppertal Jewish community, Leonie Goldberg, said, “I thought the time of the packed suitcases was for always over. Now I am considering when we need to again pack these suitcases.”

The Tagesschau.de article cites several sources, including a journalist (other than Gensing) who reported having been told in a bar in Hamburg that Jews should be sent to gas chambers, and Stephan Kramer, a domestic intelligence chief who knows that anti-Semites exist in his own country.

On Wednesday, USA Today reported that the best country in the world, whatever that means, is Germany.

Jonathan Zalman is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn.