Berlin Jews say that things have not been more dangerous in the German capital since the Second World War. Some of them are withdrawing, many are thinking about emigrating. Does Judaism have a future in Berlin?
Dec 10, 2025, 05:29Dec 10, 2025, 05:29
Hansjörg Friedrich Müller, Berlin / ch media
In February 2024, the Jewish student Lahav Shapira was beaten to the point of hospitalization by a fellow student of Palestinian origin in front of a Berlin bar. The fact that this happened in Germany’s capital caused a stir and horror. Today, almost two years later, it is hardly worth noting to German newspapers when demonstrators of Arab origin march through the city shouting slogans that amount to the annihilation of Israel.
“You can’t always hide”: Jewish and non-Jewish Berliners at a rally for the state of Israel in front of the Brandenburg Gate on October 22, 2023.image: imago
Since October 7, 2023 at the latest, the day on which the Islamist Hamas committed the largest mass murder of Jews in southern Israel since the Holocaust, open hatred of Jews in Berlin has once again become a phenomenon that is too commonplace to generate headlines. The situation has not eased, even though there is now a fragile ceasefire in the Middle East.
All Jews are generally identified with Israel
The offices of Ofek, an advice center for victims of anti-Semitic violence and discrimination, are located in the center of Berlin. An employee asks that the address should not be in the newspaper. Marina Chernivsky, a dark-haired, elegant woman, is the head of the association, which has around forty employees across Germany.
After October 7, 2023, the 49-year-old reports, she and her colleagues received 15 times as many inquiries as before for a month; In the following year, demand remained six times as high. “It was almost impossible to cope with,” Chernivsky remembers.
Ofek, Hebrew for “expanse” or “horizon,” offers psychological and legal advice. “For some, anti-Semitic incidents are attacks on their lives, for example when they have to leave their previous apartment or change schools,” explains Chernivsky.
Marina Chernivsky. picture: zvg
The Israeli psychologist has lived in Berlin for over twenty years. The city, she says, is characterized by protest cultures. At the same time, there is a large and diverse Jewish community – and many expats from Israel. This makes hatred of Jews a real experience for many. In the last two years it has emerged with particular force.
Anti-Semitism, says Chernivsky, can be felt everywhere: in the swimming pool, in dating, at work, at school and at university. It doesn’t necessarily have to be loud and aggressive like at the anti-Israel rallies, but can also express itself in distance, indifference and a lack of empathy. Currently it is directed primarily against Israel, “the state that is imagined as a Jew.” In addition, all Jews are identified with Israel.
Instead of figure skating, Krav Maga is now popular
As a practitioner who supports those affected, Chernivsky is not inclined to complain, but some of what she says sounds resigned, others shocking: “Anti-Semitism is resistant to education,” or:
“Our children experience that you can be anything but Jewish.”
The psychologist cannot answer the big question of whether Jewish life in Berlin, Germany and Europe has a future. “Where should you go?” she asks back. The idea of Israel as a safe haven was lost as a result of the Hamas massacre. She always hears the sentence from Jews in Berlin: “How do I know when it’s too late to leave?” But she doesn’t feel any optimism. Israelis would still come to Berlin after October 7, 2023; However, some also considered returning.
Matthias, or – with his Hebrew name – Arik, is a man in his mid-50s who plays a leading role in the Jewish sports club Makkabi Berlin. Ten years ago, he explains over lunch in an Asian restaurant in the east of the city, he would have had no problem reading his full name in the newspaper. “Five years ago I probably wouldn’t have wanted that anymore.” And since the fall of 2023, things have gotten worse again.
Makkabi is an international Jewish sports association with branches in over sixty countries. When it was founded in 1921 in Karlsbad, Bohemia, the aim was to counteract the image of the intellectually capable but physically weak Jew.
This is necessary again today, says Matthias. “For twenty years we were begged by immigrants from the former Soviet Union for a figure skating department.” For two years now, people have been asking almost exclusively about the Krav Maga self-defense technique. The club will open a department next year. Matthias’ sons, 18 and 16 years old, also play the sport. When stewards were needed for a pro-Israel demonstration in Berlin, both volunteered. “You can’t always hide,” says her father.
Escape from the apartment under the cover of darkness
However, his older son wondered whether he should identify himself as a Jew at his Berlin university.
“At an event for freshmen, he preferred to keep his mouth shut.”
Coming out as Jewish in a new environment means carrying around a label before you can make a name for yourself. With his wife and him it was the other way around. His sons specifically sought out Jewish friends.
“I didn’t do that when I was her age.”
So the Jewish community is withdrawing – not because it wanted to isolate itself and form a parallel society, but out of necessity. Makkabi Berlin has around 500 members. In Frankfurt there are about ten times as many, but 80 percent of them are not Jews, says Matthias. “We in Berlin are looking for more balance.”
This is the only way the sports club can remain a “safe space” “in which some stupid questions are simply not asked”. The football department set up a new C and D youth team after autumn 2023, the demand was suddenly so great. And unlike a few years ago, the Jewish Moses Mendelssohn High School unfortunately no longer has any capacity to accommodate non-Jewish students.
Matthias is a native of West Berlin: a Jewish German who now has to realize that the belief that there could be something like normality for Jews in Germany was an illusion. Nevertheless, it makes a robust impression. Even when he talks about how he helped Jewish acquaintances who were threatened by an Arab neighbor move early in the morning under the cover of darkness, his descriptions remain sober.
“I don’t know anyone who hasn’t at least thought about emigrating,” says Matthias. Two members of the shooting sports department to which he belongs have already left Germany. His older son was considering volunteering for military service in Israel.
“We then brought him together with Israeli veterans who dispelled his romantic ideas.”
Muslim students don’t want to hear about the Holocaust
Much of what Berlin’s Jews report could probably also take place in London, Paris or Brussels. But something is different: the historical background. The fact that Jews have to hide again in the city where the Shoah was planned is a thorn for the Federal Republic, which wants to have drawn the conclusion “Never again” from the mass murder of European Jews.
The fact that it is primarily Arab-Islamic immigration that has worsened the situation for Jews in Germany is now less often disputed than it was a few years ago. “Teachers tell me that, especially in classes where most of the students are Muslim, many don’t want to hear about the Shoah,” says Wenzel Michalski. The bearded 63-year-old is the managing director of the Yad Vashem circle of friends in Berlin.
Wenzel Michalski. picture: zvg
Yad Vashem is Israel’s state Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem; The German association that Michalski heads wants to sensitize teachers, but also judges, prosecutors, journalists, police officers and politicians about how to deal with the past, but also about today’s hatred of Jews. It happens again and again that the German judiciary sees attacks on synagogues as “criticism of Israel,” which is supposedly protected by freedom of expression, complains Michalski.
His work is based on a shattered hope. In the 1980s, when he was studying, some fellow students thought it was cool to wear a Palestinian scarf. “It was stupid, but we didn’t feel threatened.” Later, in the 1990s in Dresden, a man told him that during the war there was “the Jew” who showed the British and American pilots where they had to drop their bombs. “That was bad too, but I thought it would go away at some point. In a sense, we believed in the end of history.”
But today we are in the worst situation since the end of the Second World War: “That stupid things are being said so openly and on a massive scale.” Last but not least, Michalski finds anti-Semitism and the indifference of the center dangerous.
“Conspiracy theories are spread at parties and no one contradicts them.”
Can there be a Federal Republic without Jews?
Nevertheless, Michalski exudes a serene calm; he seems as if he is inspired by his task. “If everything didn’t matter, I wouldn’t have to do my job,” he says. His father, a Holocaust survivor who died two years ago, often spoke about the Shoah in schools; Michalski’s 88-year-old mother, who is not Jewish herself, still does this. Some no longer wanted to invite them after October 7, 2023, out of concern for their safety. “But she carried on.”
Michalski believes he can achieve something: After his son was attacked in a Berlin school with a high proportion of migrants in 2016, the class teacher invited his parents to a lecture. “The students apologized, and not because they had to,” he reports. “One girl even read my father’s book.”
However, Michalski is not optimistic: Many Berlin Jews wanted to go to Israel and would do so. “The tradition of the wandering Jew is being revived.” Young people in particular are often very pragmatic: “My son says, for example, that there is anti-Semitism in Madrid, but at least the weather is nicer there.”
Michalski sees the existence of Israel as the big difference between today and the 1930s. Their interest group, the Central Council, will call on German Jews to leave the country in good time. “But it would be the end of the Federal Republic.” Wenzel Michalski says he feels very comfortable in Israel, even when the sirens are wailing.
“The question of whether I belong here disappears there.”