Jewish people are being attacked and abused on the streets of Germany as though the country were back in the Nazi era, political and religious leaders warned yesterday.

Escalating violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has prompted a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism in Europe in the last few days.

Murderous slogans dating back to the days of Hitler have been chanted at pro-Palestinian rallies in Germany. Jewish-owned shops were attacked and burned in riots in France at the weekend.

The Israeli ambassador to Germany, Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, said: ‘They pursue the Jews in the streets of Berlin… as if we were in 1938.’

Scroll down for video



Participants of a pro-Gaza demonstration hold a poster depicting Israeli's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Berlin authorities announced today they've banned pro-Gaza protesters from chanting anti-Semitic slogans

Since the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas, participants at anti-Israel demonstrations across Germany have frequently used anti-Semitic slogans and also called for Jews to be gassed

Jewish groups expressed disgust over the tide of hate crimes and warned of ‘a new level of hatred and violence in all of Europe’.

Foreign ministers from Germany, France and Italy yesterday issued a joint statement condemning the rise in anti-Semitic protests and violence and vowed to combat hostility against Jewish people.

In Germany, there have been reports of protesters chanting ‘Jews to the gas chambers’. Police in Berlin have banned race-hate slogans that reappeared after being originally used in the days of the Nazis.

Officers had to protect an Israeli tourist at the weekend after protesters spotted his yarmulke (a small, round cap) and reportedly charged towards him shouting ‘Jew! We’ll get you.’

Fourteen people were arrested in the western city of Essen on suspicion of planning an attack on a synagogue. The imam of a Berlin mosque is under investigation after allegedly calling on Muslims to murder ‘Zionist Jews’.

In Paris, hundreds of protesters have attacked synagogues and set fire to shops in the suburb of Sarcelles, nicknamed Little Jerusalem.

Posters urged anti-Israel demonstrators to join ‘a raid on the Jewish district’, saying: ‘Come equipped with hammers, fire extinguishers and batons.’

Rioters face riot police, following a pro-Palestinian demonstration, in Sarcelles, north of Paris, on Sunday

Witnesses said several hundred youths marched on a synagogue chanting ‘Death to Jews’ and were beaten back by riot police using tear gas. The protesters then targeted a shopping centre, a kosher grocery and a Jewish-owned chemist.

Police said 19 people were arrested after the violence on Sunday. Eight synagogues in France were said to have been targeted in the last week. In the Netherlands, the home of the Dutch chief rabbi was attacked twice in one week.

Dieter Graumann, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said the rise in attacks was a terrifying reminder of an era that was thought to be in the distant past.

He said: ‘We are currently experiencing in this country an explosion of evil and violent hatred of Jews, which shocks and dismays all of us.

‘We would never in our lives have thought it possible any more that anti-Semitic views of the nastiest and most primitive kind can be chanted on German streets.’

French youth defying a ban on a protest against Israel's Gaza offensive went on a rampage in a Paris suburb

French prime minister Manuel Valls condemned the violence in Paris as ‘intolerable’ and warned that France faced ‘a new form of anti-Semitism’.

Roger Cukierman, of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, said Jews were living in fear.

He said: ‘They are not shouting “Death to the Israelis” on the streets of Paris. They are screaming “Death to the Jews”.’

One long-time resident of Sarcelles, called Laetitia, told the France 24 TV channel: ‘We called our town Little Jerusalem because we felt at home here. We were safe, there were never any problems. And I just wasn’t expecting anything like this. We are very shocked.’

French President Francois Hollande met Jewish and Muslim leaders in the Elysee Palace on Monday and told them that fighting anti-Semitism will be a ‘national cause’.

France has around half a million Jews, the biggest population in Europe, and around five million Muslims.

The Jewish population of Germany has increased in the past two decades to around 250,000, most of them migrants from the former Soviet Union who came after German reunification.

In Gaza yesterday Israel continued to pound targets. A United Nations school sheltering displaced Palestinians was hit by shells. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the two-week battle between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. The UN estimates that at least three quarters of the deaths were civilians.

Israel says 27 of its soldiers have been killed in the fighting. Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel during the current conflict, killing two civilians. Some American and European airlines yesterday halted flights to Israel after a rocket landed near Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport.