“A Great Concern” – Anti-Semitic Crime Continues To Surge In Germany

The attack of a right-wing extremist on the synagogue in Halle, Germany last year marked a new peak of anti-Semitic violence in Germany. According to Josef Schuster, President of the Central Jewish Council in Germany, the brutality of the attack exceeded “everything that has existed in recent years” and was “a deep shock for all Jews in Germany”.

But this attack didn’t come out of nowhere. Anti-Semitic crimes have increased each year since 2015 in Germany.

According to the latest report by the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), 2019 saw the highest number of such police-recorded crimes since the country started recording them in 2001.

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Interior Minister Horst Seehofer called the rise in anti-Semitic crimes a “great concern,” according to a report by ABC.

” The largest threat, as in the past, is the threat from the right,” Seehofer said. “Extreme-right politically motivated cases make up more than half of all of such recorded crimes — it is an order of magnitude that causes us concern, great concern.”

He also said the country’s domestic intelligence last year increased surveillance of the Alternative for Germany party, focusing attention on its youth arm along with a faction known as “The Wing,” which has a history of downplaying the country’s Nazi past, according to the report.