Ant-Semitism characterizes everyday life for Jews in Germany. This is the result of an evaluation by the Antisemitism Research and Information Center (RIAS) of more than 150 interviews with Jewish people in Germany under the title “Jewish Perspectives on Antisemitism in Germany 2017-2020”.
Among those interviewed, whose answers were completely anonymized, are many from Hessen, who describe anti-Jewish situations. Daniel Poensgen, author of the study and speaker at RIAS, presented the survey on Tuesday evening in the Jewish community in Frankfurt. Afterwards, some representatives of the community classified the results.
The study is almost historic, said Poensgen – most of the discussions had been held before the attack on the synagogue in Halle in 2019 and before the pandemic with the lateral thinkers demos, and all took place before the Documenta, which Benjamin Graumann from the board of directors of the the Jewish community as “breaking a taboo”. However, the report has lost nothing of its topicality due to the current situation.
Antisemitism takes many forms
Many of those affected have their say, describing the reality of their lives as Jews in Germany: They are insulted, threatened, have to justify themselves and experience a loss of solidarity. “And that every day,” said Sabena Donath, who heads the education department at the Central Council of Jews in Germany and is part of the management team of the emerging Jewish Academy in Frankfurt.
However, the majority of society is not aware of this extent. “Anti-Semitism takes many forms, but they are often imperceptible to non-Jewish people,” agreed Michaela Fuhrmann, the political spokeswoman for the Jewish community.
Non-Jews often attributed anti-Semitism to the Holocaust. They often understand Israel-related anti-Semitism as a critical debate, without being aware of the double standards or the demonization and delegitimization of Israel in many statements.
Even extreme physical violence, such as the terrorist attack in Halle, is not seen as a surprise by Jewish respondents, unlike the majority of society. “We were shocked, but not surprised,” commented Michaela Fuhrmann. The warnings in advance were not heard.
“You feel like you have the plague”
There are many examples from the region that demonstrate everyday anti-Semitism in the study: At a youth camp in Hesse, a group leader asks the participants to take off their yarmulke while walking around town; a Jewish schoolchild is the only one in the class to write an essay about the Gaza Strip; a person from Hesse describes in the survey that a landlord did not want her in the house because he feared attacks. “You are then in a really stupid situation, you have the feeling that you have the plague without being able to do anything about it and you feel helpless,” describes the interviewee. “And the worst thing is that people naturally say they have nothing against Jews. And that’s probably true, they probably really don’t have anything against Jews, they just don’t want them in the house because there could be trouble.” This lack of solidarity hurts.
The examples illustrate cuts in everyday life, but are not necessarily relevant under criminal law. But in Hesse, a total of 111 anti-Semitic crimes were also registered in 2021; these are the most recent numbers. The crime statistics for 2022 presented on Wednesday do not explicitly list anti-Semitic crimes. Much of the anti-Semitic