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Germany warns of ‘mass exit’ of Jews if hatred persists
FRANKFURT AM MAIN, Jan 26, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Foreign Minister Heiko Maas
warned Sunday that Jews could leave Germany on a “massive” scale if urgent
action was not taken to stem rising anti-Semitism.
Writing in Der Spiegel weekly on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the
liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, Maas said anti-Jewish insults and
attacks, in real life and online, had become “a daily occurrence”.
Almost one in two Jews has considered leaving Germany, he said, a country
that has long taken pains to confront its Nazi past.
“We need to take urgent counter-measures to make sure that such thoughts
do not turn into a bitter reality and lead to a massive departure of Jews
from Germany,” he wrote.
The fight against anti-Semitism would be a priority when Germany takes
over the rotating EU presidency in July and the chairmanship of the Council
of Europe, the bloc’s leading human rights body, in November, Maas vowed.
Germany will push for tougher legal consequences for anti-Semitic acts, he
said, and for more EU nations to make Holocaust denial a crime — currently
illegal in over a dozen member states including Germany, Belgium and Italy.
Berlin will also step up the battle against anti-Jewish hate speech and
disinformation on social media, Maas wrote, saying perpetrators “should feel
the full force of the law across Europe”.
An anti-Semitic attack in the eastern German city of Halle in October —
in which a gunman tried but failed to storm a synagogue before killing a
passer-by and a customer at a kebab shop — showed that “Jewish sites and
communities” needed better protection “everywhere in Europe”.
To help make that happen, Germany will contribute 500,000 euros ($550,000)
to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) this year,
Maas said.
– School trips –
The diplomat stressed the importance of educating young people about the
horrors of World War II, when six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
Research had shown that “a third of young Europeans indicated knowing
little to nothing about the Holocaust,” he said.
The comments came on the same day a YouGov survey found 56 percent of
Germans were in favour of making a school visit to a concentration camp
mandatory.
Elderly Holocaust survivors will gather in Auschwitz on Monday to mark 75
years since Soviet troops liberated the camp, while world leaders held a
sombre remembrance ceremony in Jerusalem last Thursday.
More than 1.1 million people, mainly Jews, were killed at Auschwitz-
Birkenau. Most died in the gas chambers but many also succumbed to
starvation, disease and overwork.
BSS/AFP/BZC/1910HRS