With Antisemitism Rising in Germany, Jewish Groups Encourage Victims to Speak Up

[Behind the Aegis]

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!

JNS.org – In the summer of 2015, on the streets of Berlin, a gang of drunks approached an Israeli and German woman, who were speaking Hebrew, and taunted them with: “How dare you live in Germany!” They then proceeded to throw bottles at them.

Earlier this year, a Berlin family went on vacation and put their home in the care of a neighbor, only to find a swastika scrawled inside their kitchen when they returned. And last October, at a private kindergarten in Berlin, a five-year-old boy said to the class: “Hitler should have killed all the Jews.” The teacher, according to witnesses, agreed.

These are just a few of the incidents tracked by the Department for Research and Information on Anti-Semitism (RIAS), a watchdog group monitoring antisemitism in Berlin founded in Jan. 2015 under the umbrella of the Association for Democratic Culture in Berlin with funding from the Berlin Municipality. RIAS seeks to expose, monitor and prevent attacks against Jews, and has plans to expand nationwide.

In July 2015, RIAS opened an online hotline (in German, English and Russian) for victims of antisemitism. If the incident involves violence, serious threats or vandalism, RIAS assists victims in filing reports with the police when necessary.

“We have different areas that we monitor,” Benjamin Steinitz, a coordinator at RIAS told JNS.org. “The main focus is on incidents that people report to us. These can be physical attacks, verbal abuse and incidents of anti-Semitic graffiti, propaganda-like stickers, vandalism of property and desecration of memorial sites.”

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