New migrants arriving in Germany should visit Nazi concentration camp memorials to stamp out growing anti-semitism in the country, Germany’s Central Council of Jews said on Wednesday.

“People who have fled to us who have themselves had to escape or been expelled, can develop empathy in such memorials,” Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews, said. The visits should be prepared by schools and serve as a warning of where hatred of Jewish people could lead, he added.

However, a spokeswoman for the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees ministry has pointed out that integration courses already discuss the consequences of Nazi rule.

Concerns over anti-semitism – which remains a highly sensitive topic in Germany since 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust – have grown in recent months.

According to police data, anti-Semitic crimes rose 4 per cent to 681 in the first eight months of 2017 from the same period in 2016. A report published in April by an independent group of experts also found that anti-semitism is on the rise and that Germany’s 200,000 Jewish people are increasingly worried about their safety.