The cruel treatment of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman in Pakistan, personifies the dangerous senselessness of blasphemy laws. The suspected murder of the Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul has focused minds on the cruelty of the war in Yemen. Kristallnacht in Germany and Austria crystallised the pervasiveness of antisemitism. Very often it is a single horrifying event that serves to focus minds on the larger, underlying picture.

Arguably, Bibi’s persecution may hasten an end to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, and arguably Khashoggi’s death may help to end the Yemen bombardments. Kristallnacht was different: it brought out the worst in Germans and Austrians. The wanton destruction of Jewish shops and the degradation of the Jewish population and all that was Jewish did not happen simply because people were obeying Hitler’s orders, but also because it allowed many ordinary citizens to express their antisemitism through violence. Kristallnacht was the precursor of the Holocaust.

The 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht came just a couple of days before the centenary of the end of the first world war. Both events have been marked by genuine acts of reconciliation. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, spoke at Berlin’s Rykestrasse synagogue, describing Kristallnacht as a “rupture in German civilisation”. The next day, Merkel and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, embraced at Compiègne, where the armistice was signed in 1918, while in London, Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, joined the Prince of Wales to lay wreaths at the Cenotaph. Yet even though the prospect of another war in Europe is remote, if not altogether abstract, concern over antisemitism remains very real.

‘Not just a symbol for a one-off evil act.’ A photo showing Nazi-destroyed Jewish shops in Berlin at the same location 80 years later on. Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP

Germany’s postwar governments have worked hard to bring home to their electorate the evil of the Holocaust, and have led a determined fight against antisemitism. But, as the rise of the AfD party shows, it is far from gone. Of course, Germany is not alone. The recent synagogue killings in Pittsburgh brought antisemitism in the US to the world’s attention. France has just pointed to a 67% increase in antisemitic incidents this year.

I happen to be a Kindertransport child, who made her life in Britain, but who is also happy to spend time in Germany and Austria. Long ago, friendship with Willy Brandt helped to reconcile me to Germany, and I applaud the determined and continuing effort in Germany to make its people fully aware of their recent history by teaching about the Holocaust. But this approach is not enough to make any meaningful headway in the fight against antisemitism. Kristallnacht needs to be seen not just as a symbol for a one-off evil act, or even of the Holocaust, but as a reminder of a world in which antisemitism has prevailed throughout the ages.

If the battle against antisemitism is to make genuine headway, there has to be much more emphasis on the history of the Jewish people as religious and social minorities in their host countries. Their persecution repeats itself over and over again. So does their social and political exclusion. But history also records their remarkable creativity in the arts and sciences and in political life. For centuries, Jews have enriched western culture immeasurably, and in the contemporary world Israel’s technological prowess has provided new tools for the global economy.

Generations of Jews have attempted to carve out a space in which to practise their faith alongside Christianity or other world religions, and have been met with hostility, exclusion and persecution. Other Jews have chosen to take the way of integration in the societies where they have made their homes, and have often failed to find acceptance. In general, Jews have found that whatever path they choose, there is no guarantee of escape from antisemitism. Jews have been attacked either for their separateness or for their invasiveness. And Jews themselves have not helped matters by often turning against their own: the Jewish intelligentsia has not always shown much fellow-feeling for the persecuted Jews of the shtetl.

Jewish history is colourful, and antisemitism has many manifestations and many causes. Simon Schama, in his ambitious two-volume History of the Jews has chronicled much of this. But this work also serves as a reminder to use Jewish history as an essential weapon in the fight against antisemitism in the world today.

The German government has understood this and is giving valuable support to a major initiative by Sussex University to establish the Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies. This project will place the Jewish experience throughout history in a broader context and make it relevant to the larger issues of our time, especially the fight against antisemitism. The vision behind the new institute is to develop it into a leading intellectual hub for the interdisciplinary study and public discussion of the Jewish experience, and how it relates to the key challenges of our time. Its focus will be global in the search for insights and lessons that can help shape 21st-century society into a better, wiser and more inclusive place.

The history of the Jews – and especially the way in which antisemitism has emerged in different settings – can no longer be of mere antiquarian interest or commemorated in ritualised fashion. Rather, the lessons of the Jewish past need to be applied politically and ethically in order to enhance and deepen civil society.

• Hella Pick is the former UN correspondent and Diplomatic Editor of the Guardian