“We take this very seriously” – L’Express

This 51-year-old Jew born in Brooklyn, whose 63 members of his family were murdered in concentration camps, arrived in Berlin 28 years ago to rebuild what the Nazis had destroyed. He built the synagogue, then inaugurated, last June, with the mayor of Berlin, a campus housing a school, a gymnasium, a cinema and a music studio. It is the largest Jewish cultural center in Germany which has emerged since the Holocaust. “Our next project is the expansion of the synagogue. It will be three times bigger!” he says.

Faced with the increase in anti-Semitic acts – nearly 2,000 have been recorded since October 7 compared to 2,641 for the whole of 2022 – there is no question for him of thinking about exile. “We want to do our job,” insists Yehuda Teichtal, who calls for the individual responsibility of the Germans to protect the Jews. “Each of us must feel like a delegate in the fight against anti-Semitism. It’s not just about us but about everyone’s freedom,” he said, convinced that Germany remains a “one safe country.

Not all Jews in Berlin display the same confidence. “Some of us will always feel safer in Israel than in Germany, even under the bombs,” said Hanna Veiler, president of the Jewish Students’ Union of Germany (JSUD). “If there is one thing that we Jews have learned, it is that when someone threatens to destroy us, we take it very seriously,” insists David, father of a large family who prefers to keep the ‘anonymity.

In the former capital of the Third Reich, the city of the “final solution”, the anti-Semitic attacks after the pogrom of October 7 were a trauma. Two Molotov cocktails were thrown in front of a synagogue, Stars of David were spray-painted in building entrances. We no longer speak Hebrew in the metro. Jews avoid conspicuously wearing a yarmulke or Star of David. They prefer to keep their children at home and no longer give their real name for orders on home delivery sites; and no longer write their address as sender, to protect recipients.

The rise of anti-Semitism is a recurring problem. “I was already hit years ago in the metro. I was spat on. I don’t see anything new apart from the fact that young Jews became aware with October 7 of the fragility of their existence” , believes the German-British rabbi Walter Rothschild. He came to debate at the “Volksbühne” theater, on the sidelines of the presentation of a book dedicated to the first pogrom in the “barn district” in Berlin, on November 5 in 1923, perpetrated by nationalist agitators. This was ten years before the Nazis took power. Berlin has also just commemorated the 85th anniversary of “Kristallnacht”. On November 9 and 10, 1938, a pogrom (1000 businesses looted, 30 synagogues destroyed and 12,000 deported, in Berlin alone), which “opened the eyes of the Jews most faithful to the homeland”, as the German resistance Ruth Andreas-Friedrich.

But the Jewish community – 200,000 people in a country of 84 million inhabitants – refuses to draw historical parallels. The entire political class is determined to defend the existence of Israel and ensure the safety of Jews in Germany. While he had waited several months after the start of the war to go to Ukraine, Olaf Scholz was the first European leader to go to Tel Aviv, on October 17, to repeat Angela Merkel’s formula before the Knesset in 2008: the security of the Jewish state is a “reason of state” for Germany. “Those who attack the Jews of Germany are attacking all of us,” insisted the Chancellor.

Historical responsibility for the murder of 6 million Jews in Europe permeates German culture. When the national football team goes to Jerusalem, the players pay their respects at the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem. Visiting a former concentration camp is part of the training of a police officer or soldier. Germany’s largest popular daily, Bild Zeitungrequires its journalists to sign a moral commitment in favor of reconciliation with the Jews and Israel’s right to exist…

The Constitution, to which the Germans constantly refer, is the expression of the rejection of Nazism. “Human dignity is intangible. All public authorities have the obligation to respect and protect it,” requires article 1. Synagogues and Jewish institutions are therefore the best protected buildings in Germany with 24-hour surveillance.

It is politically inconceivable that Germany would refuse to supply weapons to Israel as it did to Ukraine at the start of the war. Boris Pistorius, the defense minister, promised to “respond within 24 hours” to any request from Israel. “If necessary, we will send soldiers,” even assures MP Roderich Kiesewetter, president of the reservists’ association.

The slightest relativization of Hamas’ crimes leads to strong reactions. After her pro-Palestinian statements in Amsterdam, Greta Thunberg was declared persona “non grata” in Germany. The president of the Greens, Ricarda Lang, but also the head of the Fridays for Future movement, Luisa Neubauer, distanced themselves from the Swedish activist. The culture minister threatened to cut funding for Kassel’s modern art exhibition if members of the art commission continued to sign petitions from BDS, a Palestinian anti-Zionist organization calling for a boycott of Israeli products. Already splashed by the presence of an anti-Semitic work in the 2023 edition, this commission finally resigned en bloc on November 16.

But the battle is not won. More than a hundred pro-Palestinian protests took place in Berlin, a city that hosts the largest exiled Palestinian community in the world (estimated at 40,000 people). Only one demonstration was organized in support of Israel. “Before I happily discussed with Muslim taxi drivers the future of the Middle East. I told them that I was Jewish. It was no problem. Now I don’t say a word. I get in, I pay, I’ll go down,” explains David.

In neighborhoods with a large Muslim population, anti-Semitism has become evident. The delegate for the integration of the popular district of Neukölln, Güner Balci, recognized that there was in “certain circles great support for the actions of Hamas”. The vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, also invited part of the left to review their arguments: “Anticolonialism must not lead to anti-Semitism,” he said in a video which created a buzz on the Internet.

Finally, immigrants were asked to respect the history of their host country. “People who come to live here and who are looking for a place in society are welcome,” assures Michael Roth, the social democratic chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federal Assembly (Bundestag). “But they must understand that this country in which they make their life also has a history,” he continues before concluding: “Those who want to become citizens of our country must defend the existence of Israel.”