Germany’s Chancellor: ‘Anyone Who Incites Antisemitism Must Expect to Be Prosecuted’

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday condemned the ongoing discrimination faced by the Jewish community, calling it “outrageous and shameful.”

Scholz emphasized that combating antisemitism is a task for all citizens, highlighting its growing importance amid “increasingly shameless attempts to normalize far-right positions.”

The German leader was speaking at an event organized by the International Auschwitz Committee, which was formed by survivors of the infamous Nazi death camp to promote Holocaust education and fight discrimination, during a ceremony in Berlin ahead of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Monday.

The Holocaust is “a responsibility that each and every one of us bears in our country,” regardless of religion or family history, Scholz said.

Approximately 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, with about 1 million of them murdered at Auschwitz before its liberation by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945.

“They were gassed, shot, they died of hunger, forced labor, and medical experiments,” Scholz said. These were “more than a million unique people, individuals, wives and husbands, boys and girls, grandmothers and grandfathers.”

He also honored other Holocaust victims, including Sinti and Roma, political opponents of the Nazi regime, homosexuals, the sick, and people with disabilities.

“Anyone who supports terrorism, anyone who incites antisemitism must expect to be prosecuted,” Scholz said at the event.

Germany has experienced a sharp spike in antisemitism since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. In just the first six months of 2024 alone, the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin surpassed the total for all of the prior year and reached the highest annual count on record, according to Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS).

The figures compiled by RIAS were the highest count for a single year since the federally-funded body began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015, showing the German capital averaged nearly eight anti-Jewish outrages a day from January to June last year.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2023, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.

However, experts believe that the true number of incidents is much higher but not recorded because of reluctance on the part of the victims.

“Only 20 percent of the antisemitic crimes are reported, so the real number should be five times what we have,” Felix Klein, the German federal government’s chief official dealing with antisemitism, told The Algemeiner in an interview in 2023.

On Thursday, Scholz denounced recent attacks on individuals due to their beliefs, gender, or skin color.

“This fight for the inviolability of the dignity of each and every individual continues,” he said. “Our responsibility, 80 years on, is to resist this hatred.”

On Monday, a service will be held at Auschwitz to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which Germany has observed since 1996. 

The event will be attended by Britain’s King Charles, French President Emmanuel Macron, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Scholz, and German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck.

At the 75th anniversary of the Nazi death camp’s liberation, more than 100 Auschwitz survivors participated in the celebrations in person. Steinmeier has now invited several survivors to travel to the camp for the upcoming event, with fewer than 50 expected to attend.

“There are fewer and fewer,” Steinmeier’s office said. “It is a special feature of the meeting that it will be one of the last with survivors.”

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