Central Council of Jews (Germany) - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

Assaults, arson, slurs: Report finds rising anti-Semitism in Berlin

AP via Ynet News — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 04:00:53 +0000

Local research institute documents 410 incidents in German capital during first half of 2020, more than two a day, including physical attacks, property damage, threats, harmful behavior and anti-Semitic propaganda.

Small square brass plates set in the pavement remember Jewish residents of Berlin’s Lichtenberg district who were torn from their homes and killed by the Nazis decades ago. Nearby, the charred remains of a Jewish-run bar destroyed by arson last month attest to a hatred that still burns among far-right extremists. Small square brass plates set in the pavement remember Jewish residents of Berlin’s Lichtenberg district who were torn from their homes and killed by the Nazis decades ago. Nearby, the charred remains of a Jewish-run bar destroyed by arson last month attest to a hatred that still burns among far-right extremists.

The attack on the bar named Morgen Wird Besser, which in English means Tomorrow Will Be Better, underscores the findings of a victim support group that anti-Semitism remains in Germany’s capital 75 years after World War II ended.

Man wearing a skullcap at demonstration against an anti-Semitic attack in Berlin – (Photo: AP)

In a report released Tuesday, the Department for Research and Information on Anti-Semitism Berlin, or RIAS, documented 410 incidents — more than two a day — during the first half of 2020. The group’s count of anti-Semitic acts included six physical attacks, 25 cases of property damage, 20 threats, 58 examples of anti-Semitic propaganda and 301 examples of malicious behavior such as giving the stiff-armed Nazi salute.

The report’s publication comes amid nationwide concerns that intensified in October 2019 after an armed man tried to force his way into a synagogue in the central German city of Halle on Judaism’s holiest day, Yom Kippur, then fatally shot two people nearby. The suspect posted an anti-Jewish screed online before the attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week decried how anti-Semitism had become “more visible and uninhibited.”

“It is a disgrace, and it shames me deeply,” Merkel said.

A national report issued in May showed anti-Semitic crimes in Germany last year reached their highest level since the country started keeping records.

The Interior Ministry reported a 13% increase in anti-Semitic crimes to 2,032, more than 93% of which were attributed to the far right. Anti-Muslim crimes also rose 4.4% to 950, more than 90% of them committed by alleged far-right perpetrators.

The report Tuesday highlights recent cases in Berlin. Graves were desecrated at a Jewish cemetery in Pankow, a borough where a man also interrupted a woman speaking Hebrew on her phone with a Nazi salute and a shout of “Heil Hitler!”

So-called stumbling blocks, marking the last voluntarily chosen places of residence of the victims of the Nazis, are embedded in the pavement in Berlin, Germany – (Photo: AP)

The words “Jew! Hate! J.H.” were sprayed outside a Jewish-owned business in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and a swastika was etched into the glass of a restaurant in Schöneberg. In Kreuzberg, 10 “Stolpersteine” — brass memorial plates like the ones near the Lichtenberg bar — were painted black.

“Despite the massive restrictions on public life to contain the COVID-19 pandemic since March 17, the number of anti-Semitic incidences was just under the level for the first half of 2019,” said RIAS, which documented 458 incidents for the same period last year.

The head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews said the pandemic is acting as a “catalyzer,” with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories circulating online. RIAS documented incidences of protesters wearing Stars of David, the yellow badges persecuted Jews were forced to wear under Nazi rule, at demonstrations against anti-virus measures.

Levi Salomon, of the Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism, told The Associated Press the problem has been growing for a long time and has become a “huge, huge” issue — not only in Berlin.

“I’ve been observing right-wing extremism for more than 20 years across the whole country, and the situation has become far worse than it was 20 years ago,” Salomon said.

The New Synagogue, the Centrum Judaicum is seen from the TV tower in Berlin, Germany – (Photo: AP)

The owner of the bar in Lichtenberg, for example, had been receiving threats since he first opened a Jewish restaurant in the area in 2012. He later converted it to a bar.

He declined to speak with the AP for fear of attracting more attention but told Salomon’s group that neo-Nazis entered his bar and smashed bottles in early 2019. The year before, he said, they insulted him as a “dirty Jew” and said they would drive him out of the premises. Anti-Semitic slogans were scrawled outside the pub.

The latest threat came the Monday before the arson when an anonymous caller told the bar owner he wasn’t wanted in the neighborhood. Someone then smashed a window and set a couch inside on fire, leading to the almost complete destruction of the bar on Aug. 14.

A crude Star of David also was scratched into the door, as were the numbers 2 and 8, an apparent reference to the “Blood and Honor” neo-Nazi network, the owner reported.

The remains of a lampstand in the burned out Jewish-run bar ‘Morgen wird Besser’ (Morning will be better) in Berlin, Germany – (Photo: AP)

Lichtenberg has “a very active right-wing/far-right scene, which had been very much aware of the fact that the owner of this bar was Jewish,” RIAS researcher Alexander Rasumny said.

His group has also tracked threats against individuals involved in fighting anti-Semitism. The mayor of Lichtenberg reported being on an “enemy list” drawn up by right-wing extremists. A prominent Turkish-born local politician said she received threats from neo-Nazis.

However, hundreds of residents and others rallied against anti-Semitism outside the bar shortly after the fire. Some held signs with slogans such as “No place for Nazis!” and “No place for extremism.”

Following last year’s attack in Halle, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer warned that far-right extremism poses a growing threat in Germany. Since then, authorities have banned several neo-Nazi groups and carried out extensive raids.

Flowers lie on a concrete slab of the Holocaust Memorial to mark the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi Auschwitz death camp in Berlin – (Photo: AP)

But Seehofer has resisted calls for a study on police racism after multiple incidents in the last year involving extremism among officers.

Calls for such a study grew stronger last week after more than two dozen officers in western Germany were suspended on suspicion of sharing far-right propaganda in WhatsApp groups. Officials said the chats contained “the most foul and repugnant neo-Nazi, racist and anti-refugee agitation.”

In response to the concerns in Berlin, the state prosecutors’ office this month announced a new department focused on hate crimes.

Prosecutor Ines Karl, who will head the department, said it will open direct contacts with victim and support groups, provide more transparency of police work and win back trust in the justice system. No additional staff are being hired, however.

The Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism’s Salomon said more investment is needed to help fight anti-Semitism.

“As long as that doesn’t happen, we’re going to really have problems,” Salomon said.

Source: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rkujyKPrP

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German Jews call for anti-Semitism classes for Muslim immigrants

Deutsche Welle — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 11:35:26 +0000

Germany’s federation of Jews says Muslim immigrants need special classes to counter anti-Semitic beliefs. They also condemned the AfD for normalizing anti-Semitism in Germany.

Germany’s Central Council of Jews on Sunday called for combating anti-Semitism among new Muslim immigrants through education.

Vice President Abraham Lehrer told the Protestant Press Service that he expects anti-Semitism among immigrants to become more of a problem as they become more settled in Germany.

“The problem of immigrant Arab-Islamic anti-Semitism still lies ahead of us. Many of these people were influenced by regimes in which anti-Semitism is part of the rationale of the state and the Jewish state is denied the right to existence,” Lehrer said.

“When these people no longer think only of jobs and housing, this influence will have a greater bearing and people will express their opinions openly. In order to prevent this scenario, we need to tailor integration courses more closely to these people, preferably by country of origin.

“What is needed are additional hours (in integration classes) in which fundamental values such as democracy and the treatment of women in our society are taught intensively.”

Lehrer was speaking ahead of the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the seminal pogrom in which Jewish houses, synagogues and businesses were torched across the country with the implicit blessing of authorities.

AfD provides platform for anti-Semitism

Speaking more broadly about anti-Semitism in Germany, particularly in regard to the rise of the far right, Lehrer said the current climate in Germany reminded him of attitudes at the end of the Weimar Republic.

Anti-Semitism had surged in Germany with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 and the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party.

“We are concerned about the spread of anti-Semitism. I still encounter old sentiments of resentment in line with the principle ‘the Jews dominate television and the banking and financial world,'” he said.

He said authorities had failed to adequately condemn and prosecute anti-Semitism on display at neo-Nazi marches, such as those in Chemnitz.

Lehrer said the AfD, while not explicitly anti-Semitic, had helped foster anti-Semitic attitudes.

“At the very least (the AfD) creates a platform on which anti-Semitism can grow and manifest itself openly. In its draft party manifesto, for example, the party opposes circumcision and shechita (Jewish method of animal slaughter),” he said.

“Radical representatives such as Björn Höcke relativize the Holocaust and are apparently supported by a broad majority. The AfD is a kind of catalyst for various groups with anti-Semitic roots. It deliberately transgresses boundaries and thus contributes to anti-Semitic attitudes being regarded as normal.”

He called on states to introduce an anti-Semitism commissioner to signal that the government was concerned about the issue and devoted special attention to it.

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Source: https://www.dw.com/en/german-jews-call-for-anti-semitism-classes-for-muslim-immigrants/a-46152809

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Jews around world concerned by far-right breakthrough in German election

Reuters — Sun, 24 Sep 2017 15:52:03 +0000

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) – Jewish groups in Europe and the United States expressed alarm on Sunday at the far-right Alternative for Germany’s success in Germany’s parliamentary election and urged other parties not to form an alliance with the AfD.

Early projections gave the AfD 13.5 percent of the vote, allowing it to enter the Bundestag for the first time, as Germany’s third-biggest party.

The far-right has not been represented in parliament since the 1950s, a reflection of Germany’s efforts to distance itself from the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.

Ronald Lauder, president of the New York-based World Jewish Congress, called Chancellor Angela Merkel a “true friend of Israel and the Jewish people” and decried the AfD’s gains at a time when anti-Semitism was increasing across the globe.

“It is abhorrent that the AfD party, a disgraceful reactionary movement which recalls the worst of Germany’s past and should be outlawed, now has the ability within the German parliament to promote its vile platform,” Lauder said.

The AfD, which has surged in the two years since Merkel left Germany’s borders open to more than 1 million migrants mainly fleeing Middle East wars, says immigration jeopardizes Germany’s culture but denies it is racist or anti-Semitic.

The European Jewish Congress urged centrist parties to stick to their vows to avoid forming coalitions with the AfD.

“Some of the positions it has espoused during the election campaign display alarming levels of intolerance not seen in Germany for many decades and which are, of course, of great concerns to German and European Jews.”

The Central Council of Jews in Germany said the election results had confirmed its worst fears and urged other parties to remain united in opposing the AfD.

“A party that tolerates right-wing extremist thinking in its ranks and incites hatred against minorities …will now be represented in parliament and nearly all state legislatures,” the group’s president Josef Schuster said in a statement.

“I expect our democratic forces to expose the true nature of the AfD and its empty, populist promises,” he added.

Germany, home today to an estimated 200,000 Jews, has built a reputation in recent decades as a tolerant, safe place for Jews to live, but official data show anti-Semitic crimes reported to the police rising 4 percent to 681 in the first eight months of 2017 against the same period last year.

Reporting by Francesco Guarascio in Brussels and Andrea Shalal in Berlin; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Peter Graff

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-election-antisemitism/jews-around-world-concerned-by-far-right-breakthrough-in-german-election-idUSKCN1BZ0SI

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