Anti-Semitism is a plague. And one that is, as I have realised in the aftermath of Hamas’s horrific terror attack in Israel on October 7, far more endemic than I was willing to accept before, despite having been questioning and confronting this hate all my life as the child of an American Jewish and Catholic German couple.
Anti-Semitism, its prevalent nature, and the shame and guilt for the Holocaust that sit at the heart of Germany’s memory culture have indelibly shaped my life.
My late grandmother never acknowledged being aware of Germany’s crimes towards Europe’s Jews. I did not believe her, but it did not matter. Whenever we came to visit, she always insisted that my siblings and I tour the Jewish cemetery, Europe’s oldest, in the city of Worms, where she spent her final years.
My parents separated when I was young, but my mother often told us the story of how my elder brother and I were baptised in the same Catholic Church where my father had gone to school because my atheist father wanted to please his devout mother. It was only as an adult that I learned from my father that it was in fact my Jewish mother who insisted on it. Less than 50 years prior European Jews spent fortunes acquiring fake baptismal certificates in an attempt to escape the Nazis. My mother, like countless others, clearly knew the revival of this ancient hatred always loomed as a threat.
Today, however, it appears the world has turned upside down. The fight against the scourge of anti-Semitism is under threat from those who refuse to criticise Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip because they conflate such action with anti-Semitism.
Nowhere is this more clear than the reactions to a now infamous March 3 tweet by Congressman Mike Collins. On that day, an openly anti-Semitic far-right account posted a tweet implying the author of a Washington Post article that included a tongue-in-cheek reference to the US being........