The most senior Jewish leader in Germany has issued a dire warning that antisemitism has become so prevalent in the country that Jewish life now exists only behind armed guards and concrete barriers.
Josef Schuster, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said the situation confronting Jews was “unbearable”.
He accused politicians of engaging in theatrics over security instead of tackling Jew-hatred at its roots.
Speaking after the terror attack at a Chanukah event in Sydney, Schuster, 71, warned that Germany had now reached a “dangerous level of habituation” to antisemitism.
Political action, he said, too often results in police protection rather than prevention.
“Jewish life is only possible under massive security precautions,” Schuster said. “That is not a solution. It is merely fighting the symptoms.”
Though he conceded that Germany still provided comparatively strong police protection for Jewish institutions, Schuster said it had been quietly accepted that synagogues, schools and community centres across the country had to resemble fortresses.
His vision, he said, remained Jewish life “without a protective shield”.
He called for a new “uprising of the decent” – a phrase first used by then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder after a neo-Nazi firebomb attack on a Düsseldorf synagogue in 2000.
Today, Schuster said, decent people appeared alarmingly fewer in number — or even silent spectators.
Since the Gaza ceasefire, he said he had seen no easing of pressure on Jewish communities.
Antisemitic incidents and crimes, he warned, remained entrenched at a disturbingly high level.
“What we are experiencing is a normalisation of antisemitism in society,” Schuster said. “That must never be accepted.”
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