German Jews are Moving to Israel Due to Rising Antisemitism
Days after a warning to Jews who wear skullcaps that they may not be safe when donning them publicly, Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested stationing police officers at every Jewish building or institution in Germany.
“Unfortunately there is to this day not a single synagogue, not a single day care center for Jewish children, not a single school for Jewish children that does not need to be guarded by German policemen,” Merkel said in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
“Unfortunately, there has always been a certain number of anti-Semites among us,” she added. “We have to deal with the ghosts of the past,” Merkel said. “We have to tell our young people what history has brought over us and others,” she added. On Saturday, the German government’s commissioner combating anti-Semitism warned that he cannot guarantee safety for Jews wearing traditional religious skullcaps in public ‘anywhere’ in the country.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin lamented the recommendation, saying that it marked the government’s “capitulation to anti-Semitism” and was evidence that Jews are not safe in the country. Also over the weekend, a photo exhibition of Holocaust survivors in Vienna was vandalized with a knife.
