Jews will leave Germany “en masse” if nothing is done to combat the resurgence in anti-Semitism, the German Foreign Affairs minister Heiko Maas warned on Sunday.
“We need to take urgent measures to avoid a mass Jewish exodus from Germany,” Maas wrote in a feature for Der Spiegel, which was published the day before the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
He claimed one in two Jews has already considered leaving the country, adding that there are anti-Semite attacks every day in Germany. He said the fight against anti-Semitism has become a priority for Germany, which will be taking over the presidency of the presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of 2020.
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The Jewish community and Jewish sites should be better protected “everywhere in Europe,” he said. He announced that Germany would donate 500,000 euros to the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) in 2020 to help with that.
Holocaust survivors are to meet at the Auschwitz site on Monday the 27th of January to mark 75 years since the camp was liberated by Russian troops. Nazi Germany killed 1.1 million people at the camp, most of them Jews.
Germany has seen an increase in racist and anti-Semite attacks, including an attempt to attack a synagogue full of worshippers in Halle with an assault rifle in 2019. The attack was only just stopped in time.
The Brussels Times
