Antisemitism Overshadows 30th Anniversary Of German Reunification
By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News
(Worthy News) – The German government and Jewish community have condemned anti-Semitic violence that overshadowed the 30th-anniversary commemoration of the reunification of Germany.
On Monday, Germany’s leading Jewish group, the Central Council of Jews (CCJ), expressed outrage over an attack on a 26-year-old Jewish student outside a synagogue that “can only be classified as anti-Semitic.” “The situation that Jews increasingly become a target of hatred must not leave anybody cold in a state of law like Germany,” said CCJ head Josef Schuster.
The young man wearing a skullcap, was about to enter the synagogue grounds in the northern city of Hamburg on Sunday when he was hit on the head with what appeared to be a folding spade, police said. He was rushed with head injuries to an in intensive care unit, but his life was not in danger, reports said.
The suspected perpetrator, a 29-year-old German man of Kazakh origin wearing military-style clothes, was arrested after the attack. It happened while Jews were gathering Sunday to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot at the Hamburg synagogue. However, officers guarding the building were reportedly not able to detain the attacker before he approached his victim right in front of the synagogue.
A spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel said the German government is shocked that “such a violent crime can happen on German streets.” And, “This is sickening,” Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin and expressed wishes for a speedy recovery of the victim. “We condemn this attack in the sharpest possible way.”
MORE VIOLENCE
Earlier, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas expressed anger over the apparent neo-Nazi defacement of a religious symbol outside a synagogue in Berlin.
Police in the German capital said over the weekend that a piece of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah was removed from its case at the Tiferet Israel synagogue’s doorpost. It was defaced with swastikas and replaced, police said.
Maas said on social networking site Twitter that “it simply hurt to see something so disgusting.” He stressed that “This crime must be quickly solved and those responsible punished!” The minister added that he expressed his support for the country’s Jewish community.
His comments came after authorities already pledged to heighten security for Jewish premises following an anti-Semitic attack last year on a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle.
In that incident on Yom Kippur, viewed by religious Jews as the holiest day in Judaism, a heavily armed white supremacist targeted the synagogue. He killed a passer-by and a man at a nearby kebab stall after failing to force his way into the building.
GERMAN REUNIFICATION
The latest wave of antisemitism came around the 30th anniversary of Germany’s reunification on over the weekend.
Germany’s president Frank-Walter Steinmeier suggested Saturday that despite tensions, today is “the best Germany there has ever been.”
He proposed a new memorial to the “peaceful revolutionaries” who helped end communist rule.
Germany was reunited on October 3, 1990, after four decades of divisions in the Cold War-era when parts of Europe were under communist dictatorships.
East Germany joined the western federal republic less than a year after the east’s communist rulers — under pressure from growing protests — opened the Berlin Wall. The rest of the highly fortified border between the two states was also opened on that historic day of November 9, 1989.
ECONOMIC DIVISION
While much progress has been made since then, economic and other differences between the west and the less-prosperous east still persist.
That has fueled far-right groups and antisemitism in the nation.
It has added to concerns among Germany’s Jews, who numbered 100,000 in 2017.
Germany hosts the eighth-largest Jewish community in the world and the forth largest in Western Europe, according to World Jewish Congress (WJC).
Most Jews living in Germany today are originally from the former Soviet Union, the WJC says. Some six million European Jews were killed by German Nazis during World War Two.
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