HRM Deborah of Israel: Germany - Anti-Semitic Attacks in 2008

Anti-Semitism in Germany (1960)

The world is a dangerous place to live;

not because of the people who are evil,

but because of the people

who don't do anything about it ~ Albert Einstein

January: A group of youths in central Berlin shouted anti-Semitic slurs and set a dog on five students who were leaving a Jewish school yesterday, according to police. Two main suspects, age 27 and 31, were to appear in court today after police arrested four "punks'' following the incident, police spokesman Klaus Schubert said. The students, age 15 to 17, were leaving their school on Grosse Hamburger Strasse in Berlin's Mitte district at around 2:45 p.m. local time. As the students approached a nearby corner, the suspects began shouting anti-Semitic words and had a dog chase one of the Jewish students to a local bakery, Schubert said. Witnesses called the police; the students were unhurt.

January: In Angermuende - A gravestone in the Jewish cemetery of Angermuende, near Berlin, was vandalized with a swastika.

January: In Berlin - In a Jewish cemetery in the eastern part of Berlin, vandals damaged a window of the Lapidarium building, which houses gravestones dating to the 19th and early 20th century.

January: In Berlin - A window of a Jewish institution in the western part of Berlin was damaged by gunfire, according to police reports.

February: Unknown perpetrators have attacked and vandalized a Jewish nursery school in the German capital. The Jewish community in Berlin is now calling on Germans to join them in a prayer service on Thursday. Representatives from the Gan-Israel Jewish Nursery School in Berlin have invited Germans to join Jewish leaders in prayer for "tolerance and solidarity" on Thursday. The call came after unidentified assailants sprayed swastikas and other Nazi symbols on the school walls and threw a smoke flare into the building at the weekend. "The attempt to burn down and lay waste to a Jewish nursery school is a dangerous escalation of intolerance and right-wing radicalism," the school in the western district of Charlottenburg said in a statement. "This attack was not only aimed at Jews, but against everyone who cherishes freedom and democracy." Gideon Joffe, the head of the Jewish community in Berlin, said the attack was connected to growing anti-Semitism in Germany.

February: Vandals daubed a swastika on one of the slabs that make up the Holocaust memorial in downtown Berlin towards the end of February, police said. A security service worker found the symbol, and authorities ordered it removed, police said in a statement. There was no immediate word on who might have been responsible.

Other Countries with alleged ties to Anti-Semitism :