Antisemitic incidents have been on the rise in contemporary Germany, committed especially by far-right groups. Abuses may be of verbal or physical nature. Since the Halle synagogue shooting in 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic, Antisemitism has increasingly entered public discussion. According to the Federal Criminal Police Office, the Gaza war and genocide have caused increased tensions between Muslims and Jews in Germany and a spike in antisemitic hate crimes or assaults."And since the Hamas terror attack against Israel and the Gaza war, anti-Semitic acts have risen dramatically." - "https://www.bka.de/DE/Presse/Listenseite_Pressemitteilungen/2024/Presse2024/240521_PM_Fallzahlen_PMK2023.html". Federal Criminal Police Office. Retrieved 2025-07-02. (in German) The election of the far-right AfD into the Bundestag in 2017 has stirred controversy due to some of the party's leaders expressing their wish to "move on" from Germany's Culture of Remembrance (Erinnerungskultur).
Context In 1998, Ignatz Bubis, a leader of the German Jewish community, pointed to a "spreading intellectual nationalism" that made him fear a revival of German antisemitism. Others point to Germany's growing Muslim population, both the Turkish "guest workers" who arrived in the 1950s to 1970s,Gunter Jikeli, "Antisemitism Among Young European Muslims," Chapter 10 in Alvin Hirsch Rosenfeld, Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives, Indiana University Press, 1993. and the large wave of migrants from Muslim countries who arrived during the European migrant crisis that began in 2015.
Extent
A 2012 poll showed that 18% of the Turks in Germany think of Jews as inferior human beings.Liljeberg Research International: Deutsch-Türkische Lebens und Wertewelten 2012 , July/August 2012, p. 68Die Welt: Türkische Migranten hoffen auf muslimische Mehrheit, 17 August 2012, retrieved 23 August 2012 A similar study found that most of Germany's native born Muslim youth and children of immigrants have antisemitic views.
In 2014, antisemitic activities in Germany prompted the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to lead a rally in Berlin against antisemitism in Germany.Yardley, Jim. "Europe’s Anti-Semitism Comes Out of the Shadows." New York Times. 23 September 2014. 24 September 2014. In that same year, about 3,500 people rallied in front of the Frankfurt City Hall to protest against a wave of antisemitic incidents in Germany. A few hundred of the protesters were from the Kurdish-Israeli Friendship Association. According to the JTA, "Merkel expressed her support for the event in a letter.""Thousands Rally in Frankfurt Against Anti-Semitism." Jewish Journal. 2 September 2014. 5 September 2014.
The number of crimes against Jews and Jewish institutions continued to increase in 2018. In a 2018 survey conducted by the European Union, 85% of Jewish respondents in Germany said that antisemitism was a "very big" or "fairly big" issue, and 89% said that antisemitism had become a worse problem in the last five years. In February 2019, crime data released by the government for 2018 and published in Der Tagesspiegel showed a yearly increase of 10%, with 1,646 crimes linked to a hatred of Jews in 2018, with the totals not finalised as yet. There was a 60% rise in physical attacks (62 violent incidents, vs 37 in 2017). Germany also reported a new record of cases linked to hatred of Jews in 2020, with 2,275 crimes with an antisemitic background until the end of January 2021.
A June 2024 survey found that antisemitism in Germany was very high, citing an enormity of "extreme violence", with as much as an 83% spike in antisemitic incidents when compared to the preceding year. In 2023 alone, 5,164 antisemitic offenses were recorded by the Federal Police.
Furthermore, according to Germany's Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) reporting and support network, since 7 October 2023, there has been an average of 32 antisemitic incidents per day in Germany, up from an average of seven in 2022.The report: Antisemitische Vorfälle in Deutschland 2023 According to a separate report by RIAS, 1,383 antisemitic incidents were recorded in Berlin alone during the first half of 2024. This amounts to an average of seven to eight incidents per day. It is the highest number of reported antisemitic incidents in Berlin in a single year since documentation began.
In November 2024, Berlin's police chief, Barbara Slowik, warned Jewish and LGBT residents of the city to be more careful in Arab-majority neighborhoods of the city where locals often have sympathy for terrorist groups. In these neighborhoods, there has been an increase in antisemitic and racist incidents, which is why she advises, "who wear a kippah or are openly homosexual or lesbians to be more attentive".
According to a report by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Germany recorded 1,047 antisemitic crimes, including two attempted murders, in the first three months of 2025.
Sources As per German police statistics, over 90 percent of antisemitic incidents are committed by "followers of the farright". However, government officials and Jewish community leaders doubt the figure, because cases with unknown perpetrators and some kinds of attacks get automatically classified as "farright". According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, antisemitism is no "elementary component of left-wing extremism"."Antisemitismus im Sinne der Abneigung oder Feindschaft gegenüber Jüdinnen und Juden als Volksgruppe oder Religionsgemeinschaft ist kein elementarer Bestandteil linksextremistischer Ideologie." - "Lagebild Antisemitimus 2022/23" p.93 from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (in German)
A 2017 study on Jewish perspectives on antisemitism in Germany by Bielefeld University found that individuals and groups belonging to the extreme right and extreme left were equally identified as perpetrators of antisemitic harassment and assault by survey participants, while the largest part of the attacks were committed by Muslim assailants. The study also found that 70% of the participants feared a rise in antisemitism due to immigration, citing the antisemitic views of some of the refugees. A study among Jews, published by the European Union in 2018, has also listed Muslims as the biggest perceiver perpetrators of antisemitic incidents in Germany. 41% of such attacks were committed by perpetrators identified as “extremist Muslims”, 20% by far-right and 16% by “far-left extremists”.
In its 2017 summary, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) concluded that antisemitic rhetoric spread by Islamist organizations posed a significant challenge to the contemporary peaceful and tolerant society of Germany.
Incidents
2017 In January 2017, a German court in Wuppertal upheld the 2015 decision of a lower court which deemed an attempt by three Muslim attackers to burn down a synagogue in 2014 on the anniversary of the Kristallnacht "a means of drawing attention to the Gaza conflict with Israel". The offenders were not sent to prison. The German regional court ruled that the actions of the three perpetrators were "governed by anti-Israelism and not antisemitism". The attackers subsequently received suspended sentences. Green Party MP Volker Beck protested the ruling, saying: "This is a decision as far as the motives of the perpetrators are concerned. What do Jews in Germany have to do with the Middle East conflict? Every bit as much as Christians, non-religious people or Muslims in Germany, namely, absolutely nothing. The ignorance of the judiciary toward antisemitism is for many Jews in Germany especially alarming."
Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said:
2018
An Arab Israeli who wore a kippah was assaulted. The incident was recorded and the video went viral. The Echo Music Prize was awarded to rappers who featured antisemitic clichés in their lyrics. As a result of protests from artists and the press, the award was discontinued.
2019 On 9 October 2019, a neo-Nazi gunman attacked a synagogue in Halle during Yom Kippur. Two doors of the synagogue were damaged when improvised explosives were set off. The attacker shot and killed a woman near the Synagogue and a man in a Turkish kebab shop.
2021 In September 2021, German police averted a possible attack on a synagogue in Hagen during Yom Kippur services, arresting four people including a 16-year-old Syrian youth.
2023 During an April 2023 pro-Palestine protest, the antisemitism monitoring organization RIAS and several German media outlets reported alleged antisemitic chants of "Death to the Jews". The Berlin Police have confirmed they are investigating charges of Volksverhetzung; two pro-Palestine rallies planned for the following weekend were cancelled.
On 18 October 2023, 11 days after the October 7 attacks, a Berlin synagogue was firebombed with molotovs by two masked men. Since the escalation of the Gaza war in October 2023, there has been a surge in antisemitic incidents on a scale unseen in years.
2024 On 2 February 2024, a Jewish Israeli student was hospitalized after being assaulted following an altercation related to the Gaza war. According to police, the victim was repeatedly punched in the face until he fell to the ground, after which he was kicked while lying on the floor. The assailant subsequently fled the scene. He suffered facial fractures, and a suspect was later located and arrested. The student is a grandson of Amitzur Shapira, an Israeli athletics coach who was killed during the 1972 Munich massacre. On 5 April 2024, an unknown individual threw an incendiary device at the door of a synagogue in the northern city of Oldenburg, causing a small blaze and minor damage. German police have offered a cash reward for information about the arson attack. According to a Jewish Independent article on 21 May 2024, Jewish parents living in Berlin's suburbs started enrolling their kids at Jewish schools in Mitte, Berlin due to fears of rising antisemitism. The children of the parents concerned are enrolled at the schools closest to where they live, but they passed up the automatic registration for their children's local high school in favour of sending them to a school far from their place of residence for the alleged reason that it was protected by an Israeli guard, German policemen and an enclosed wall, while there are usually no guards at Berlin schools. In late June 2024, an Israeli couple in their early 20s was assaulted in Berlin's Potsdamer Platz after being heard speaking Hebrew by an Arabic speaking assailant. The assailant shouted abuses at them, threw a bottle and a chair at the woman, followed by punches on the man who rose in her defense. The assailant fled the scene afterwards. On 5 September 2024, a gunman opened fire at the Israeli consulate and adjacent Nazi Documentation Centre in Munich before being shot dead by police. The attacker had been under investigation for suspected ties to Jabhat al-Nusra.* On 7 October 2024, 10 memorial stones engraved with details of certain Holocaust victims, were torn from their spots. The day was also the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks.
2025 In September 2025, a shop owner in Flensburg posted an antisemitic sign on his door reading “Jews are forbidden entry here, Nothing personal, not even antisemitism - I just can’t stand you”. The incident drew comparisons to Nazi Germany’s antisemitic laws. The owner claimed he opposed the war in Gaza and therefore barred entry to all Jews. After public criticism the sign was removed, though local media reported it was later displayed inside the store.