"Once again, young Jewish boys are afraid to wear kippahs on the streets of Paris and Budapest and London. Once again, Jewish businesses are targeted. And once again, Jewish families are fleeing Europe," said World Jewish Congress (WJC) President Ronald Lauder in a speech Tuesday at the site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in the presence of 300 Holocaust survivors.
He urged world leaders who attended a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the camp to prevent another Auschwitz, warning of a rise of anti-Semitism that has made many Jews fearful of walking the streets and is causing many to question their future in Europe or to already leave the continent.
Some 1,3 million people, mostly Jews, were exterminated by the Nazis between 1940 and 1945 ;
He said he changed his speech after the recent terrorist attacks in Paris in which four Jews were killed in a kosher supermarkt by an Islamist terriorist and that also targeted newspaper satirists.
"For a time, we thought that the hatred of Jews had finally been eradicated. But slowly the demonization of Jews started to come back," Lauder said. "
The recent attack against the Hyper Cacher is not the first deadly attack on Jews in recent years. Last May another Islamist gunman killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels and in 2012 a rabbi and three children were murdered in a Jewish school in the French city of Toulouse.
Europe also saw a spasm of anti-Semitism last summer during the war in Gaza, with protests in Paris turning violent and other hostility across the continent.
"This vilification of Israel, the only Jewish state on earth, quickly became an opportunity to attack Jews," Lauder said. "Much of this came from the Middle East, but it has found fertile ground throughout the world."
Anti-Semitism is driven by Islamist extremist using hatred of Jews as a way to attack Israel, and by extreme-right nationalists in Europe.
The WJC leader, who has said anti-Semitism had reached levels not seen since World War II, urged European leaders to do more to combat rising anti-Semitism and to adopt a “zero tolerance” policy. on their home turf, Jewish leaders urged on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of
“The Jewish population is frightened,” Lauder said, stressing that religious Jews “are afraid of getting attacked in the street” for wearing a kippa. “Jews want to leave Europe because they feel their governments are not protecting them.”
He has called for the deportation of leaders who promulgate hate speech and the closing of schools that teach hateful messages. European citizens who go abroad to receive Islamist military training, he said, “are not learning how to make couscous. They should lose their passports.”