Germany’s Jewish Council has warned that hatred of Jews is becoming the country's "new normal" after a chilling report revealed almost 9,000 antisemitic incidents in a single year.
The ominous warning came from Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, after the latest figures showed antisemitism has reached alarming levels.
The Research and Information Centre on Antisemitism (RIAS) is widely regarded as Germany's leading antisemitism monitoring organisation.
In its annual report, released this week, it revealed that 8,725 antisemitic incidents were recorded across Germany’s 16 federal states in 2025 – 24 incidents every day.
Schuster said the relentless barrage of abuse, aggressive threats and outright attacks on Jews now risks turning Germany into a society where anti-Jewish hatred is simply accepted as routine behaviour.
"8,725 antisemitic incidents, around 24 a day – these are not statistical outliers, they are the depressing reality in Germany," he said.
"Instead of a calming of the situation, we are experiencing an entrenchment of antisemitism…The almost everyday presence of hatred of Jews is leading to the creation of a new normality.”
And he warned that Jewish life in Germany was increasingly being forced out of public spaces and could only continue under "immense protective measures".
Among the incidents recorded by RIAS were four cases of extreme violence. These include the terrorist attack at Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the case of a man in Coburg who was stabbed after being mistaken for a Jew.
Other serious incidents included a woman who was choked and assaulted while cleaning a Holocaust memorial in Hamburg and the words “kill Jews” being painted on a high-speed train.
A further 178 people suffered physical assaults, and alongside this were also 257 threats, 413 cases of criminal damage and thousands of incidents involving abuse, harassment and antisemitic graffiti.
The highest number of these shocking incidents took place on Germany’s public streets, but incidents were also reported at universities, on public transport, at synagogues, memorial sites and across the internet.
Germany's federal antisemitism commissioner, Felix Klein, gave an equally bleak assessment.
"Antisemitism in Germany appears to be advancing unchecked," he warned.
In 2022, RIAS recorded 2,610 antisemitic incidents, but by 2023, that figure had jumped to 4,886.
Now, however, it stands at 8,725, and researchers claim the true total is most likely to be even higher, saying many incidents are never reported because the victims are too frightened.
The RIAS report just released found that anti-Israel activism accounted for the largest identifiable share of the antisemitic incidents.
Researchers also documented a significant number of cases linked to Germany’s far-right extemists, while hundreds more were also associated with aggressive far-left radicalism.
RIAS said the war in the Middle East continued to be used as a pretext by many people to express antisemitic views or to actively target Jews for attack.
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