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ANTI-SEMITISM

Vandals damage 40 Jewish graves at cemetery in eastern Germany

Vandals have desecrated a Jewish cemetery in eastern Germany, damaging more than 40 graves, police said on Wednesday.

Published: 20 September 2023 22:21 CEST
Vandals damage 40 Jewish graves at cemetery in eastern Germany
Pictured is the centre of Köthen, Saxony-Anhalt. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert

The bulk of the damage in the town of Köthen in Saxony-Anhalt was caused by gravestones being pushed over, police in Dessau-Rosslau said.

The vandalism at the ancient burial site is estimated to be worth around €20,000, they said.

The crime is thought to have happened between September 15th and 19th.

Seven decades after the Holocaust, in which the Nazi regime slaughtered six million Jews, anti-Semitism remains a burning issue in Germany.

Anti-Semitic incidents declined in 2022 compared to the previous year but there was a rise in anti-Semitic violence, according to the Federal Association of Research and Information Centres on Anti-Semitism (RIAS).

READ ALSO: Holocaust survivor urges Germany to fight ‘cancer’ of hatred

A total of 2,480 anti-Semitic incidents were documented in 2022, including nine cases of extreme violence — an all-time high since the survey began in 2017.

In October 2019, a gunman killed two people in the eastern city of Halle, having failed to storm a synagogue on Yom Kippur.

Before the attack, he had posted a racist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic manifesto online.

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ANTI-SEMITISM

Germany sees sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts

Anti-Semitic acts rose sharply in Germany last year, especially after war broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in October, according to new figures released on Tuesday.

Published: 25 June 2024 17:03 CEST
Germany sees sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts

The Federal Association of Research and Information Centres on Anti-Semitism (RIAS) documented 4,782 anti-Semitic “incidents” in 2023 – an increase of more than 80 per cent on the previous year.

More than half of the incidents – which included threats, physical attacks and vandalism – were registered after Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented October 7th attack on Israel, RIAS said.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency last week also published figures showing a new record in anti-Semitic crimes in 2023.

A total of 5,164 crimes were recorded during the year, the agency said, compared with 2,641 in 2022.

Anti-Semitic crimes with a “religious-ideological motivation” jumped to 492 from just 33 the previous year, with the vast majority committed after October 7.

Felix Klein, the government’s commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism, said the RIAS figures were “absolutely catastrophic”.

The Hamas attack had acted as an “accelerant” for anti-Semitism in Germany, he told a press conference in Berlin.

“Jewish life in Germany is under greater threat than it has ever been since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded,” he said.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,600 people, also mostly civilians, Gaza’s health ministry said.

Islamophobic incidents also increased dramatically in Germany last year, according to a separate report published on Monday.

The CLAIM alliance against Islamophobia said it had registered 1,926 attacks on Muslims in 2023, compared with just under 900 in 2023.

These included verbal abuse, discrimination, physical violence and damage to property.

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