A defining fact of germany s post-war identity and the country has worked to confront it yet anti-semitic attacks are on the rise in germany the political dissent of the right wing nationalist party now represented in parliament is provoking deep concern among germans and in jewish communities so too is the recent influx of muslim immigrants a recent study by the american jewish committee documents widespread anti-semitism amongst them in one widely reported incident last year a jewish pupil the grandson of holocaust survivors quit his berlin high school after suffering mobbing and abuse at the hands of arab and turkish classmates living in fear how anti-semitic is germany that s our topic this week on quadriga and here are our casts it s a pleasure to welcome kristen held back she s a freelance journalist who recently wrote a book about syrian refugees in germany and the fears and prejudices they evoke she
That there is increased anti-semitic activity in the words of the report in terms of propaganda verbal and physical abuse so what exactly is going on there are we seeing a minority on the margins of society that feels increasingly empowered to act out. big ears that. this is you know and this image isn t the marty factorial thing i mean stupid to say that but it s true their . use of if you like traditional real anti semites who somehow may feel emboldened by the internet from social media then the new and to some might say call themselves anti globalists who are situated within these so-called alternative for germany this new party to never say they re against jews but it s always the east coast the capitalists and then it s goldman sachs or whatever and somehow it all boils down to the old enemy and then there is something
Giving workshops talking about empowerment and raising awareness about discrimination. even today gemma can t understand why the school failed to take such action while her son was still a student there. the mccaskey family is still left with the sense that the administration did not want to admit to or confront the anti-semitic attacks that were happening at their school today the family is trying to look toward the future oscar is now at a new school and says he s happy they re under you disha met other jewish parents especially jewish mothers whose children have had similar experiences that s given me a feeling of solidarity. that s perhaps that in media something in me is changed. comes to how i feel about my city and my whole in my view this lack of solidarity and compassion the refusal to
To how to answer these questions so they don t appear and to semitic they are i mean the fact that the. management of the school the mosque didn t do anything to protect my son even off the we asked him again and again shows. a pretty big resentment against jews because otherwise this person would have been a lump or the whole school or in fact also the police people who were politically responsible for the school and we have learned from other people from other schools often claim and unfortunate got munich and so forth similar incidents because not all people because in public now people come out and talk about it. the same report that i just quoted from the german government although it admits that attitude or says the attitudes of months the broader majority haven t changed it does admit
Gay students and girls well also. badly abused and the school did nothing but in this case because it was jews it was extreme it was even worse because they didn t beat up other kids now your opening statement indicates that you definitely don t see this as an isolated phenomenon and yet the government s anti-semitism report. more or less quoting here comes to the conclusion that in comparison with any other time before world war two or thereafter open anti-semitism has rarely been less tolerated by the broad majority of society than today so how do you reconcile that statement with what your child experienced well firstly we germans have learned how to oncet questions about and to semitism no german would say i m an semitic or i hate jews so people find their learned in rituals in remembrance day and all this how