Chancellor Angela Merkel recently acknowledged that a new form of Jew-hatred has entered Germany during the last three years with the wave of Muslim migrants she invited. I don’t know if the TV documentary below has anything to do with her surprising admission, but it certainly illuminates the extent of the problems that Jews now face in Berlin.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:00 A van that plows into a crowd on purpose.

00:05 Nobody can or wants to get used to such catastrophes.

00:10 Good evening, and welcome to Spiegel TV. Also unacceptable to me is the fact

00:15 that there are people in Germany who are cursed as s*** Jews, or who become victims

00:20 of racist attacks. And to date precisely not by some

00:25 brainless neo-Nazis, but recently by just as brainless Arab anti-Semites.

00:30 In some Berlin schools in the meantime the spirit between cultures

00:35 is as frigid as between Israel and the Palestinians.

00:41 When a Jewish student becomes the class enemy: Ana Sadovnikova, Roman Leberger and

00:46 Claus Meyer-Heuer have talked with both sides.

00:51 The Rückert family celebrates the Shabbat only behind closed doors.

00:56 Often they don’t display their religion any more.

01:01 [singing in Hebrew]

01:11 Liam, the younger of the two brothers, had to find out that the word ‘Jew’ had become a swearword.

01:16 In the middle of Berlin. Seventy years after the end of the war.

01:22 It all started when he switched schools. —At the beginning, when I was in class,

01:27 on the third day, the subject of anti-Semitism [was brought up]

01:32 by the substitute teacher. And there some students said that

01:37 if there was a Jewish student in the class, they would harass him.

01:42 That’s when I knew that I cannot say that I am Jewish. I said then

01:47 that I was Israeli, and then one called me a s*** Israeli and

01:52 another one called me a s*** Jew, because he thought that

01:57 all Israelis are Jewish. All of them here think so.

02:02 Now they all think that I’m Jewish. From then on, much changes for Liam.

02:08 Israel, his mother’s native country, is in the eyes of the other students an enemy country. The boy

02:11 who had proudly celebrated his bar mitzvah at thirteen is suddenly an outsider.

02:14 One who doesn’t dare to go outside in his hometown. —He started skipping school.

02:19 He simply didn’t go there. He had forty days, he went there, I sometimes

02:28 drove him there, to the school, and he simply didn’t enter; but I didn’t know that.

02:33 Just to avoid his class.

02:38 Seventy percent of students were either Arab or

02:44 Polish or, well really only Arab and Polish; or Turkish.

02:49 And the rest were either German or something else.

02:54 Arab anti-Semitism in the middle of Berlin?

02:59 Looking for answers, we drive to the Neukölln district, to the Al-Noor mosque.

03:04 Similar to the Jews, here people also pray on Friday. —Sorry, may I ask you a question?

03:09 We are recording something about Israeli Jewish people, Arab people.

03:14 No, we don’t feel like it at all right now. —Why? —We don’t want to. We would like

03:18 to be asked about something else. —We were told that Jewish children

03:21 are being harassed in the schools. —This is not true. In which

03:24 schools are there Jewish children at all, in public schools? They are all hidden in synagogues

03:28 or somewhere else. —No, there are totally normal Jewish children

03:31 in schools. —I’ve never heard about that. I have never seen Jewish children in any school.

03:35 Never. —But there’s news in the press that Jewish children

03:38 are harassed in the schools. —I have nothing to do with that.

03:41 Could I ask you a question? —Yeah, it doesn’t work here. There’s a sign: forbidden to stand here.

03:45 Why you did come here? [bad German] Other street better. Here forbidden!

03:50 Then you ask the question. Why is the camera no switch off? Switch off camera!

03:55 The Sonnenallee. Almost all the stores are owned by Arabs. The proportion

04:00 of migrants reaches — in some schools — over eighty percent. A no-go area,

04:05 as described by the Central Jewish Council. They won’t talk here often, and then only

04:10 with hidden faces. —Jewish children in schools are harassed, and

04:16 that’s how I experienced it, anyway. So when someone knows

04:21 that it’s a Jewish kid, he will be harassed. But it has to be said

04:25 that when someone isn’t Jewish and is a traitor,

04:31 he’ll be called a Jew. The Jews

04:36 love money and power, and we, on the other hand,

04:41 we don’t like people who want to have money. —But this is a prejudice, right?

04:46 I mean not all Jewish people can be this rich and powerful —Those are prejudices, but like I said,

04:51 it’s what’s showed on TV in the movies; we take it at face value.

04:57 In Zentralwohlfartsstelle der Juden [Central Welfare Office for Jews], Marina Chernivsky is

05:02 a kind of archivist of the new anti-Semitism. The news flood already fills

05:07 an entire folder. —For example, a teacher, Mrs. A., who

05:11 tells about recurring fights in a group of students in eighth grade.

05:16 The female students describe the Shoah — the Holocaust — as ‘just’,

05:20 and consider Hitler ‘great’. The school did nothing against this incident.

05:25 A climate in which obviously the word ‘Jew’ becomes a self-evident insult.

05:29 I knew that it was a current swearword, but I’ve never heard it before.

05:34 To hear it with my own ears — paralyzed me. To imagine that

05:38 my son could encounter that in school was deeply discomfiting.

05:43 An experience that happens often and precisely in schools where ‘Jew’ as a curse word

05:48 is current and is not confronted, is the assumption that

05:53 that it doesn’t concern anyone, that there are no Jewish students there

05:56 whatsoever, so it’s allowed to continue.

05:59 Chernivsky is trying to get rid of the anger by educating.

06:04 However, it’s becoming harder with every conflict in the Middle East. The anti-Semitism

06:09 is always offered as an outlet for anger, every escalation in the Middle East, every, say,

06:14 action or a political… political

06:19 strain in Israel and in the Middle East, Syria, or wherever,

06:24 causes the incidents in schools to worsen and intensify.

06:29 Sigmunt Königsberg can also hardly ever rest;

06:34 in fact he’s an official counselor on the anti-Semitism problem, but lately he feels rather like a

06:39 security counselor. —For example I wouldn’t recommend to anybody to get on the subway,

06:42 here, in Berlin, wearing the Star of David. This is valid for all Berlin.

06:49 Or, I wouldn’t recommend walking through Berlin with a kippa. — Why?

06:54 I wouldn’t recommend it, because I… the safety [of that person]

06:59 couldn’t be guaranteed. Drive in the Ruhr region. Since the refugee

07:04 Wave, the number of migrants of Arab origin has sharply increased.

07:10 In the Altenessen quarter an owner of a Lebanese snack bar allows us

07:15 to talk with guests and employees. In the Lebanon war, Mahana Kamil

07:20 lost family members through the attacks by the Israeli Air Force; ever since then Jews are the enemy.

07:25 Those from Israel. He has nothing against those in Germany. —Can I show you a video?

07:30 This happened a couple of months ago during a rally in Stuttgart

07:35 I find it good. Yes. All Arabs should be like that. — But precisely here in Germany?

07:38 We have a special responsibility towards our Jewish fellow citizens… to do something like that…

07:42 Yes, exactly. Look. Hitler. What did Hitler do to the Jews?

07:51 Do you know that? Are you German? —Do you find it good? —I don’t find it good,

07:56 but with such people you have do this. Hitler said, I let

08:01 a couple of people — Jews — live, and later, do you know why

08:06 he killed the people? And he had the right;

08:11 he was right, I think. Those people want to have everything, all the countries, all the things.

08:16 They don’t leave anything for other people. —The Jews? — The Jews, exactly!

08:21 That’s right. That’s right. Our imam Said Moussa Assad

08:26 said that Israel is a big mistake. You have therefore… like cancer.

08:32 And if you don’t remove cancer, it stays in your head and in your body.

08:37 Yes, and so it is. Not everybody thinks like that. Some sound with their displeasure

08:42 with the Jews almost diplomatic. Almost. —When you say that Jews were attacked

08:47 in the school or by the children, that’s right, but on the other hand, what are the Jews doing

08:52 with all the citizens in Palestine, and so on? Those are children; they are dying

08:57 regularly every day. Who gives them the right? Is that justice?

09:02 This is also unjust. I’m also against it when one

09:07 man attacked a Jew or children, or so, I also disagree.

09:13 Those are also people. They have a different faith. They have a different religion.

09:18 It’s true, but… what should I say? This is normal.

09:23 What is “normal” for some is unbearable for the Rückert family.

09:28 They would never have believed that their faith would put them in danger.

09:33 We are scared, of course. There are things like

09:38 during my grandparents’ lifetime that come to mind

09:43 We hear stuff like: s*** Jew, dirty Jew.

09:48 It’s 2018 — something like that shouldn’t be happening again.