Germany’s national soccer team has forcefully repudiated fans who chanted “Seig Heil” during a World Cup qualifier match in Prague last Friday, deeming them “deplorable.” Friday, September 1, was the anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland.
“I’m full of anger and I’m very much shaken to see that some so-called fans use football, and an international match, for their deplorable demonstrations,” team manager Joachim Loew told reporters. “They bring shame on our country.”
“We don’t want them, we’re not their national team, and they’re not our fans,” Loew asserted. Given our history, it’s very important for us to represent our country in a dignified fashion and its values of tolerance, respect and openness to the world. These troublemakers demean this image.”
In July, Josef Schuster, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, stated that due to rising anti-Semitism, there were still parts of the country where it is considered dangerous to be Jewish.
“In some districts in major cities, I’d advise people not to identify themselves as Jews,” Schuster, who is also a WJC vice president, said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag cited by Deutsche Welle. “Experience has shown that openly wearing a kippa or a necklace with the Star of David is enough to attract verbal or physical threats.”
Schuster, who earlier this year had called for the government to establish an anti-Semitism commission, decried what he saw as a lack of progress in dealing with the problem.
“The EU Parliament has recommended that all member states appoint such a representative … so it would be very strange if Germany didn’t appoint a commissioner to fight anti-Semitism,” he was quoted as saying.
In August, Die Welt reported on a new study which found that 60 percent of German Jews have thought about emigrating because they no longer felt safe.
The online survey of more than 500 Jews was conducted by researchers at Universität Bielefeld and Frankfurt University and found that three quarters of German Jews saw anti-Semitism as a major problem and have little hope for the future. 29 percent stated that they have been harassed or offended for being Jewish while three percent said they had been physically assaulted. Despite these negative reactions, however, three quarters of respondents stated that they still felt comfortable there.
Around 70 percent of respondents indicated that they were concerned about the recent influx of Middle Eastern immigrants, stating that it could lead to an increase in anti-Semitism while 56 percent said they were scared of attacks by migrants.
According to the study “most members of the Jewish population in Germany do not dare to express their faith in the public – the fear is too great to be a victim of psychological and physical violence.”