Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor who headed the council from 2006 to 2010, said the future of Jewish life in the federal republic has been put into question.
She cited the example of a Hanukka festival in the city of Mülheim that had to be cancelled because security could not guarantee protection for the participants.
Knobloch told the Heilbronner Stimme newspaper that “Anti-semitism [is] in the heart of German society.” She said a daily climate of “aggressive antisemitism” existed in Germany.
Knobloch, who is currently the president of the Munich Jewish community, said that Jewish life could only be possible “in public with police protection and under the most serious security precautions.” There are some 100 000 registered members of the Central Council of Jews.
Antisemitic violence, including physical attacks, are part and parcel of German society, Knobloch said. She called on the German government to employ a commissioner for antisemitism. “Antisemitism has been strengthened from the right and left and in the Muslim community,” said Knobloch.
Knobloch previously told The Jerusalem Post that the boycott Israel campaign “disguises the socially unacceptable”, adding “It has modernized the Nazi slogan ‘Don’t buy from Jews!’ by demanding, ‘Don’t buy from the Jewish state.’”
She has been the key driver of an anti-BDS bill passed in Munich in December, noting that “Jewish institutions, synagogues, and cemeteries were frequently damaged”.
Another politician, Gregor Gysi from the Left Party, had earlier also called all native Germans “Nazis” and their extinction by way of population replacement by migrants “fortunate”.
“Oh and by the way… every year more native Germans die than there are born. This is very fortunate. It’s because the Nazis are not very good at having offspring. The decline of Germans is why they are so dependent on immigration from foreign countries,” Gysi said.
Knobloch has sharply rejected attempts by AfD to appeal to the Jewish community. “It can hardly be surpassed in audacity and mendacity, as the AfD abuses the legitimate concerns of Jewish people against anti-Semitism among Muslims in Germany for their own purposes,” she complained.