Anti-semitism in Europe. Always with us?

Worries about anti-Semitism in Europe clouded this week's commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz

“NEVER again.” That was the message of political leaders gathering this week in Auschwitz to mark the 60th anniversary of its liberation, including heads of state from France, Germany, Russia, Poland and Israel. And it was the message many sent in their own countries. “Remember”, said President Jacques Chirac, as he unveiled a Shoah Memorial in Paris that features a wall engraved with 76,000 names of those sent to their deaths from France. “Do not forget.”

Yet the ceremonies come at an awkward time. A report released this week by Natan Sharansky, an Israeli government minister, concluded that “anti-Semitic expression has grown over recent years” and that “the greatest number of events and the most severe attacks occur in Europe.” Another report, from America's State Department, speaks of “the increasing frequency and severity of anti-Semitic incidents...particularly in Europe.”

Linking the Holocaust to today's anti-Semitic attacks may seem far-fetched. But some have raised the spectre of a new persecution of European Jewry. One Auschwitz survivor, Elie Wiesel, told a conference in Brussels last year that European Jews were living in fear. “Don't say they are paranoid, they are not. They are simply realistic,” he said. Charles Krauthammer, a columnist, wrote in the Washington Post in 2002 that “in Europe, it is not very safe to be a Jew”, adding that “what is odd is not the anti-Semitism of today but its relative absence during the past half-century. That was the historical anomaly.”

How bad is anti-Semitism in Europe today? The number of incidents recorded in the Israeli report jumped by 20% in 2004. France, home to Europe's biggest Jewish and Muslim populations, is often thought of as the worst offender, and the report duly puts it at the top of the list in 2004. Yet it also says that “anti-Semitic expressions have somewhat declined” in France since mid-2004. And it points to a steep rise in Britain as “alarming”, and to a “disturbing” trend in Russia and Ukraine.

Who are the perpetrators? In western Europe, the State Department identifies “disadvantaged and disaffected Muslim youths” as increasingly responsible, alongside traditional far-right groups. In central and eastern Europe and Russia, skinheads, ultra-nationalists and other far-right elements are more often to blame.

The causes seem to fall into two broad categories. The first is the import into Europe, often via television images, of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In France, for example, anti-Semitic attacks, often perpetrated by Muslims, rose steeply after the second intifada began in 2000. The second is a confused mix of anti-Americanism and a belief that, as the State Department puts it, “the Jewish community controls governments, the media, international business, and the financial world.” This fits the prejudices of both the far right and radical Islam. Anti-Semitism is not necessarily coherent or even organised. A recent study commissioned by the French government found that, of 166 violent attacks, 11 were motivated by neo-Nazism; about 50 by the Arab-Israeli conflict; the rest were attributed to general “disaffection”.

Yet Marc Knobel, of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, says “the image of France as an anti-Semitic country is nonsense.” Most French Jews are well-integrated. There were still 194 violent anti-Semitic acts in 2004, by the government's definition, up from 112 in 2003. What has changed, say Jewish groups, is that the French government is now taking the matter seriously. Even the Israeli government recognises France's effort in fighting against anti-Semitism.

Certainly Mr Chirac now reacts strongly. “Anti-Semitism has no place in France”, he said this week, adding that it was not an opinion but a perversion. His strong words were echoed in Germany by Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, who said that anti-Semites should never again “be allowed to bring disgrace on our nation.” Mr Schroder was speaking a few days after deputies of the far right National Democratic Party (NPD) in Saxony caused a scandal by refusing to join in a minute's silence for victims of the Holocaust, and by insisting that the bombing of German cities, particularly Dresden, was “cold-blooded, premeditated, industrial mass-murder.”

Yet on the whole Jews in Germany see little cause for alarm. “There is anti-Semitism,” acknowledged Julius Schoeps, a prominent German Jewish historian, last year. “But no more nor less than in previous years.” To be sure, anti-Semitic crimes by right-wing extremists happen in Germany, as elsewhere, and militant Islamic vitriol against Jews is watched with growing concern. The percentage of Germans admitting to negative views of Jews also rose between 1998 and 2003, but only from 20% to 23%. And the Jewish community in Germany is now the world's fastest-growing. Each year for the past decade, some 15,000-20,000 Jews have arrived from the former Soviet Union.

There are, however, signs that the post-war taboo against speaking ill of Israel, or of Jews in general, is eroding, in Germany and in other countries. Some observers fear that social acceptance of anti-Jewish speech is rising. Across Europe, anti-Israel (or, more specifically, anti-Ariel Sharon) feeling is strong: it is often hard to separate this from anti-Semitism, and the first can be used as an excuse for the second. In Germany, at least, racist outbursts by politicians are still swiftly condemned: the incident in Saxony's parliament prompted new calls to ban the NPD.

Anti-Semitism crops up in some unexpected places around Europe. In the Netherlands last October, a referee called off a football match because he was receiving so much anti-Semitic abuse. This week the Muslim Council of Britain refused to take part in Holocaust Memorial Day because the organisers would not link it to a condemnation of “genocide” in Palestine.

The story is different in central and eastern Europe, partly because relatively few Jews (or Muslims) now live there. Before 1939, when Poland had the largest Jewish community in Europe, it was also known for its tradition of anti-Semitism. After the war, the communist regimes that took over in central Europe were slow to publicise or even to acknowledge the Holocaust. They were certainly reluctant to accept the part played by their own people: witness the huge controversy over the 1941 Jedwabne massacre, thought to have been perpetrated by Poles, not Germans.

Now these countries have thrown off the Soviet yoke, anti-Semitism seems in general to be diminishing. It is mainly a preserve of far-right groups in countries such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia. If anything, it is worse in the Balkans than in central Europe or the Baltics. But the most worrying strain of anti-Semitism is not in European Union members, whether old or new, at all. It is farther east, in Russia. That is where reminders of the attitudes that culminated most hideously in Auschwitz may be needed most.

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