A group tracking anti-Semitism in Germany said Tuesday that it documented 2,480 incidents in the country last year – just under seven incidents per day on average.
In its annual report, the Department for Research and Information on Anti-Semitism, or RIAS, said that while it registered a slight decrease in antisemitic incidents in 2022, compared to the year before, there were nine incidents of extreme violence – the highest number of such cases since nationwide record keeping began in 2017.
Those extremely violent crimes include a shooting at a former rabbi’s house next to an old synagogue in the western city of Essen last November. Germany’s federal prosecutor is now investigating the case along with two other violent anti-Semitic crimes on suspicion that they may have been carried out in cooperation with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
More often, however, “it is everyday situations in which Jews are confronted with anti-Semitism,” Benjamin Steinitz, the head of RIAS, told reporters in Berlin.
These incidents can take place anywhere from work to home, to public transport, in the supermarket or at a concert. Such “everyday” anti-Semitic incidents have diverse political backgrounds and often include trivialisation of the Holocaust, in which Germany’s Nazis and their henchmen murdered six million European Jews.
Read the article by Kirsten Grieshaber in Sight Magazine.