#Antisemitism: Workshop Exhibition “Scandal or Normality?”

The federal association RIAS (Recherche- und Informationsstellen Antisemitismus e.V.) recently presented its annual report on antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2022. Although the numbers have decreased slightly compared to the previous year, nothing suggests that we, as a society, are on the right track. The lower number of reported incidents is related to the end of the pandemic, which in 2020, and especially in 2021, led to an enormous increase in antisemitic incidents, many of which occurred in the context of contemporary conspiracy narratives. In fact, the number of violent attacks on Jews actually increased in 2022, during which nine cases of extreme, potentially fatal acts of violence and 56 physical attacks were recorded.  

Our exhibition title is phrased as a question: “Scandal or normality?” The presentation explores how society deals with such group-based misanthropy and asks if antisemitic acts are scandalized – or if people in Germany have become accustomed to Jews having to be protected by the police. Each postwar event is presented as a newspaper headline. We also conducted interviews with individuals affected by the attacks, as well as with witnesses and experts, in order to expand on the historical facts and offer a different perspective. We shared the content on Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok and observed how our followers reacted to these posts.  

A review: 

#Nazi Ideology #Sekundary Antisemitism #2010s 

In January, we commemorated the arson attack on the “House of Democracy,” which occurred in Zossen in January 2010. An exhibition on “Jewish Life in Zossen” was on display in the building at the time of the attack. When the fire department arrived, they found jeering neo-Nazis taking photos of themselves in front of the fire. 

Jörg Wanke, who served for many years as spokesman for the citizens’ initiative “Zossen zeigt Gesicht” (Zossen Shows its Face), told us that the confrontation with the right-wing extremist milieu had actually begun in November 2008, when the city laid its first commemorative stumbling stone. The stone was coincidentally placed in front of an Internet café run by a known right-wing extremist and used as a meeting place for members of the neo-Nazi scene. The violent group “Freie Kräfte Fläming,” which included well-known Holocaust deniers, not only tried to prevent the memorial ceremony; it also repeatedly disrupted other commemorative events, including torchlight marches. The citizens’ initiative “Zossen zeigt Gesicht” was founded in response to this. It organized informational evenings, festivals and concerts and opened the “House of Democracy” in September 2009 as a meeting place for engaged citizens.  

As soon as the center opened, it became the target of attacks, was smeared with graffiti and vandalized. Just four months after the opening, the building was set on fire and burned down completely. A 16-year-old boy confessed to the crime, but the charges against him were eventually dropped. The owner of the Internet café was charged with instigating the attack and sentenced to three years and eight months in prison in 2011. 

Wanke said that right-wing extremists tried to intimidate some of the supporters of the citizens’ initiative. They received death threats and their homes were attacked with graffiti. Wanke was also targeted. No help was offered by the city of Zossen: The mayor regarded the activists as left-wing provocateurs and feared that their high-profile activities would hurt the city’s reputation. She even made sure that they did not receive a new property for their center. 

Despite all of this, Wanke looks back on this time positively – after all, the city is no longer dominated by right-wing extremists. He is certain that if it were necessary today, those engaged citizens would join the struggle again.  

We present parts of the interview, which was conducted via Zoom, on our TikTok channel. All the comments there have been very friendly: 

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#Eliminatory Antisemitism #1970s 

In February we spoke with Charlotte Knobloch, President of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, about the arson attack on the Jewish Community Center in Munich. Seven people were killed in the attack on 13 February 1970, including Holocaust survivors. Knobloch was celebrating her daughter’s seventh birthday when she received the call and remembers the moment vividly.   

“It was a real slap in the face because I had known so many of the people who were there, including those who perished. They were survivors who thought they’d finally found a home where they could spend their twilight years – and then this happened.”  

Afterward, many of the congregation members left Germany. “We were suddenly reminded of the images of 9 November 1938 when Jewish institutions burned. Many people thought: I am going to leave this country if I can. I can’t handle this.”  

Although the perpetrators were never identified, Knobloch did not blame the police: “The police did everything they could to shed light on this darkness, but were ultimately unsuccessful. You’d think someone would have seen a person with a gasoline canister, but no one did.” She still hopes the case will be solved one day. “You sometimes read about that happening many years later. I think it is important that the person is identified. Otherwise, the incident is just talked about without [achieving] any closure.” 

She notes that at the moment the cooperation with the authorities is good – and necessary: “Sometimes I see strange people outside our synagogue who come here just to show their anger and hatred toward Jews. We are glad that the police and our security people are well trained and able to recognize those situations quickly.”  

And she adds that fortunately the public is now also willing to address these issues: “I really hope that this has some impact on the hatred toward Jews that we are facing.” 

In the second month of our analog and digital exhibition project, someone wrote a comment on TikTok that led us to post a reaction video. Under the video, in which Charlotte Knobloch referred to the security situation of the Jewish Community in Munich, a user wrote: “In short: There were no more attacks.” In truth, however, the list of attacks and antisemitic insults against Jews in Munich is long. In 2003, there was even a plan to bomb the synagogue, which was fortunately prevented. So we made a video to explain this. The statement in it that “antisemitism still exists” led another user to respond: “Why ‘still’? Large numbers of antisemites were let into the country in 2015. ‘Still’ makes no sense.” 

#Leftwing Antisemitism #AS+GDR #1950s 

In March we presented the verdict against Paul Merker as an example of antisemitism in the GDR. Paul Merker (1894-1969) had been a member of the German Communist Party since 1920 and held various political offices during the Weimar Republic. He went underground in 1933 and later left Germany and went into exile. He was able to flee from France to Mexico in 1942. After the war, he moved into the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) and became politically active again.  

During the war, he had spoken out in favor of compensation for Jewish victims of National Socialism. In the GDR in the early 1950s, this was interpreted as a subversive attitude toward the state. The court argued that he was advocating “Zionist positions.” The court’s verdict stated: 

“He relied on a racial, not political emigration to obtain a base in emigration [in Mexico]. In doing so, he sought contact with emigrant capitalist Jewish circles. He demanded compensation without exception for all Jews who had emigrated from Germany, regardless of whether they intended to return to Germany and regardless of whether they came from big capitalist groups or other circles. This was also why he advocated Zionist positions, recognizing the right of Jews returning to Germany to be regarded as a national minority and the creation of a Jewish national state.” 

Stalin’s death ultimately spared Merker having to serve a long sentence. He was released from prison in 1956 and rehabilitated. 

What does the story about Merker say about antisemitism in the early years of the GDR? We spoke about this with Annetta Kahane, founder of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation:  

“When this wave of antisemitic persecution began in the GDR, it was relatively arbitrary who it affected. In my parents’ circle of friends, it hit some, but not others. They were interrogated by people who had previously been Nazis. That is not surprising since East German society was also a post-Nazi society, in which only a very few had been resistance fighters. Thus all the people who actively participated in this wave of persecution were able to express their old, deeply internalized antisemitism again.  

In the early 1950s in the GDR, when Paul Merker and a few others tried to address the issue of compensation for Jewish victims, the climate was simply antisemitic. They were defamed as servants of Zionism. Jews in the GDR were never really able to recover from this; It would have required a reappraisal of the past, but just the opposite ensued: Stalinism, the legacy of National Socialism and the Shoah were repressed and denied. This continues to shape East German society to this day because these three things were never openly discussed or dealt with.” 

The traveling exhibition “Das hat's bei uns nicht gegeben. AS in der DDR” (That Never Happened Here. Antisemitism in the GDR) has been on the road in Germany for many years: “Our idea was simply to make it a subject of discussion. There was an enormous amount of resistance to it, but we also had entries in the guest book that said, ‘We had never thought about it that way.’ It is pointless fighting right-wing extremism if you don't talk about what it’s based on, namely undigested fascism, Jew-hatred, racism and all that. There is no culture of remembrance. And this leads to a lack of inhibition, a lack of any shame.”  

So far, our tweets on antisemitism in the GDR have received the most likes on Twitter: 165 ❤ 

#Nazi Ideology #Antisemitism #1940s 

In April we drew attention to a scandal that occurred during the postwar trials of director Veit Harlan. He was indicted in 1949 for his inflammatory film “JUD SÜSS.” Prof. Bill Niven of Nottingham Trent University explained the defense strategy Harlan employed in court: 

“He first argued that he had been forced to make the film – otherwise Goebbels would have put him in a concentration camp. He said he had wanted to tone down the antisemitism in the script by adding passages that could be interpreted as philosemitic but said Goebbels would have demanded the removal of these scenes. He also claimed that he couldn’t be an antisemite because his first wife had been Jewish and because he had helped many Jews during the Third Reich, which was true, by the way.”  

The court acquitted Harlan, arguing that it could not be proven that the film had had any antisemitic impact. The verdict was appealed. During the second trial in April 1950, testimony by the journalist Karena Niehoff caused an antisemitic scandal. “At the time, she had been the secretary of Ludwig Metzger, who wrote the first screenplay for JUD SÜSS. Niehoff had been active in the resistance, and also had a Jewish background, and she testified at the trial that Metzger’s first screenplay was not as antisemitic as the version that Harlan provided. That didn’t go down well, not with Harlan and not with his supporters.” 

Her statements caused a commotion and the courtroom had to be vacated. A female spectator called Niehoff a “Jewish swine.” 

Niven described the reaction to this as follows: “The most amazing part was how the mayor of Hamburg reacted. Instead of defending Niehoff, he claimed that the hecklers were Communists and that this was a campaign from the East to discredit the West as antisemitic. The press, including the foreign press, reported on this because it looked as if the mayor of Hamburg was trying to blame the antisemitism on the East instead of taking responsibility for it. That was quite scandalous at the time.” 

Harlan was once again acquitted because the court believed that he had been forced to make the film. 

There has been a major discussion on TikTok about this: Some people expressed sympathy with Harlan (“Why is it so hard for people be objective? If the ruler wants something, then the executor can’t be guilty”) and others warned against Nazi propaganda (“Extremely dangerous despite the historical context. These kinds of films continue to have a suggestive influence.”)  

#Nazi Ideology #Antisemitism #1990s 

In May we focused on an attack on a synagogue: In 1994, just before Passover, right-wing extremists carried out an arson attack on the synagogue in Lübeck. It was the first attack of this kind since the Nazi era. Just one year later, in May 1995, another fire was set to an adjoining building. Chaim Kornblum, now a rabbi in Wuppertal, was a prayer leader in Lübeck at the time and he spoke to us about it. He told us that at the time the Jewish community had become much larger as a result of immigrants from the former Soviet Union coming to Germany as so-called “contingent refugees” in the early 1990s. 

Everyone was shocked and scared after the first attack. Kornblum says that even he – a native of Germany – thought about whether he should stay in this country. For the recent arrivals, however, emigrating again was not a realistic option. The people and politicians of Lübeck expressed strong solidarity, which helped the community members deal with their grief and anger. Then the second attack occurred a year later, and more attacks followed: the Jewish cemetery was vandalized with graffiti; the community office received an email with antisemitic insults. “We were really traumatized at the time. No one thought this was possible,” Kornblum said. This is when the policy of having police surveillance in front of Jewish institutions began. But even with this, a fake bomb was put in the synagogue in 2001. Kornblum and his family, who lived in the building, had to leave their home. He still vividly remembers his 5-year-old child asking, “Papa, Mama, why do people hate us so much?”  

“How can you explain what you barely understand yourself?” Kornblum asked. He is saddened that police protection is necessary at Jewish institutions and that it is not safe to walk down the street wearing a kippah everywhere in Germany – “I just think that’s terrible.” 

According to the police, the perpetrator in the second arson attack was never identified. People discussed this in the comments section on Tiktok. Some of the posts were offensive and had to be reported and deleted. 

#Israel-related Antisemitism #Left-wing Antisemitism #1970s 

In June, we focused on the hijacking of the plane to Entebbe that took place 47 years ago. In the discourse on left-wing antisemitism, the event drew attention primarily because the hijackers separated the Jewish-Israeli passengers from the others, which some regarded as a “selection.” Among the hijackers were two Germans, Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann. 

One of the hostages was an Auschwitz survivor, Yitzchak David, who is said to have shown Böse the tattooed number on his arm. Both the Israeli media and the international press focused on the detail of Germans deciding the fate of Jews by reading out names on a list. We asked the historian Robert Wolff how this influenced left-wing discussions about the kidnapping. Evidently, this milieu was more preoccupied with another question: how to evaluate the (successful) liberation action by the Israeli military, which had been operating illegally in Uganda: “The publications within the left-wing radical milieus of the Federal Republic, which were very heterogeneous at the time and openly antagonistic to one another, were mostly concerned with criticizing the Israeli liberation action, which they claimed was a violation of international law. The liberation action was interpreted by communist groups in particular as imperialist aggression by Israel against a supposedly free people. There was no acknowledgment of the dictatorship in Uganda or the ideological significance of singling out some of the hostages. For a long time, there was no criticism of the hijacking or the fact that the hostages had been separated. Radical leftists did not engage in a broader discussion of these questions until the 1990s. In radical left-wing circles today, left-wing antisemitism is generally discussed critically and takes place within the context of events and publications organized by political educational institutions.” 

How did this joint German-Palestinian action come to exist in the first place? And who profited from whom? Robert Wolff told us that the German radicals and the PLO first established a connection in 1968. The following year, a German group, which included Dieter Kunzelmann, traveled to the Middle East for the first time to receive military training. Similar trips took place over the following years: “From their point of view, the Palestinian groups had military success with hijacking airplanes and taking hostages and had frequently gotten their own fighters freed before the eyes of the international media. As more German urban guerrilla groups were being detained by security agencies, left-wing armed groups began focusing their activities on getting them released. The German groups were thus able to benefit from the cooperation with Palestinian organizations that had experience in this area. They were also able to establish bases outside the Federal Republic that allowed them to operate internationally. The Palestinian groups also learned things from the Germans, who had more expertise in the areas of passport forgery, logistical support and fundraising. Ideology played a subordinate role in the cooperation. More important for both sides was the military advantages that came from working together.”  

Our posts on Twitter were discussed, criticized and commented on. In the next six months, we will be addressing and discussing other antisemitic incidents with experts. In July the focus will be on the bombing in Düsseldorf-Wehrhahn 23 years ago and why the perpetrator identified by the police was never indicted or convicted.  

Dr. Ruth Preusse