Felix Klein, Germany's antisemitism commissioner, said Saturday that the level of Jew-hatred in the country has risen to levels not seen for years.
Marking the 85th anniversary of the Nazis’ Kristallnacht pogrom on Nov. 9, Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to protect Germany’s Jews amid a “shameful” upsurge in antisemitism.
“Essentially, this is about keeping the promise given again and again in the decades since 1945 …, the promise ‘Never again,'” said Scholz as he spoke at a memorial ceremony in a Berlin synagogue that was firebombed last month in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in the northwestern Negev.
“Every form of antisemitism poisons our society. We will not tolerate it,” he said.
In October, two Molotov cocktails were thrown at a Jewish community building in central Berlin as antisemitic violence surged across the Federal Republic.
Germany has banned pro-Hamas and most other pro-Palestinian demonstrations of the sort that have been seen across much of Europe and in parts of the U.S. and which often see expressions of antisemitism, verbal and otherwise.
Antisemitic hate crimes in Germany from October 7 to November 9 increased 320% compared to that period in 2022.
