„It came from within“

In Israel, Yad Vashem, a partner of KAS Israel, is presenting an exhibition marking the events of Kristallnacht. Its title “It Came From Within…” refers to a remark by Professor Walter Zvi Bacharach, a Holocaust survivor from Germany: “That was the heart of the problem of German Jewry: it was so much part of German society that the Nazi blow hit it from within.”

On November 8, the eve of Kristallnacht memorial day 2013, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) published its report “Discrimination and hate crime against Jews in EU Member States: experiences and perceptions of antisemitism”. The FRA survey “is the first-ever to collect comparable data on Jewish people’s experiences and perceptions of antisemitism, hate-motivated crime and discrimination across a number of EU Member States,” specifically in Belgium (BE), France (FR), Germany (DE), Hungary (HU), Italy (IT), Latvia (LV), Sweden (SE) and the United Kingdom (UK).

The findings “reveal a worrying level of discrimination, particularly in employment and education, a widespread fear of victimisation and heightening concern about antisemitism online.” (See also the above pdf file.)