Agency Report –
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Tuesday said he was ashamed by the rise in anti-Semitic attacks in the country, just decades after the Holocaust.
“Jews are once again asking themselves whether they are actually safe in the country of the perpetrators of the past,” Steinmeier said in a greeting to mark the 70th anniversary of the Leo Baeck Institute. “This shames me and makes me angry.”
The Leo Baeck Institute was founded in 1955 – 10 years after the end of World War II – by a group of intellectual refugees, including Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, Max Grunewald and Robert Weltsch.
The aim was to preserve the German-language Jewish cultural heritage, which was almost destroyed by the Nazis.
The research centre has branches in Jerusalem, London, New York and Berlin and its library holds tens of thousands of volumes on Jewish culture, most of which are also accessible online.
The institute is named after rabbi Leo Baeck, a Holocaust survivor.
“Leo Baeck’s legacy is also an obligation for us,” explained Steinmeier. “His hope is our responsibility: only if
Jews are at home again in Germany, only then will Germany be at peace with itself.”
The institute’s president, Michael Brenner, told dpa that hostility towards Jewish life is not unique to Germany. “But due to the history of the 20th century, the threat to Jewish life in Germany is understandably seen from a special perspective.”
According to figures from the RIAS research group, anti-Semitic attacks were up by 77% in Germany in 2024, although the figures have been criticized as “opaque.”
Jewish life as a yardstick for democracy
The state of Jewish life is a yardstick for democracy in Germany, Brenner argued.
“You first have to realize how small the Jewish community in Germany is today: it comprises no more than 0.2% of the German population,” Brenner continued.
“But 80 years after the Shoah, Jewish existence in Germany is also a symbolic presence. If this is threatened, Germany’s democracy is also threatened.”
Brenner said the great achievement of the Leo Baeck Institute is to have preserved the German-Jewish heritage worldwide.
“We make sure that the centuries-long history of Jewish life in Germany is not forgotten,” said the institute’s president.
The institute is celebrating its anniversary on Tuesday with a ceremony in Berlin.
By Verena Schmitt-Roschmann
