Perhaps not since the Holocaust, which saw the annihilation of about two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish community, have the Jews of Europe lived in an atmosphere of fear so acute that it feels like a fundamental shift in the terms of their existence.
Across a Europe of daubed Stars of David on apartment buildings, bomb threats to Jewish stores and demonstrations calling for Israel’s eradication, Jews speak of alarm as pro-Palestinian sentiment surges.
This feels, to many European Jews, like the same blindness or insouciance that allowed millions of their forbears to be sent to Nazi camps to be gassed.
It is precisely to that time that images of slain Jewish babies and grandmothers in the Jewish homeland have transported them.
“Wir Haben Angst,” or “We Are Scared,” was the headline across this week’s cover of Der Spiegel, the leading German newsmagazine, over photographs of four German Jews, one of them a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor, Ivar Buterfas-Frankenthal, who said, “We Jews are once again easy targets.”
Persons:
David, ”, Joel Rubinfeld, Samuel Lejoyeux, Frank, Walter Steinmeier, Der Spiegel, Ivar Buterfas, “
Organizations:
daubed, Belgian, Union of Jewish Students of France
Locations:
Europe, Israel, Gaza, Berlin, ”, German