One day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for massive aliyah (emigration to Israel) of European Jews, German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to ensure the safety of Jews in Germany.
The German government and other officials will do everything possible to ensure the safety of Jewish institutions and citizens in Germany, Merkel said at a press conference in Berlin.
“We are glad and also grateful for the existence of Jewish life again in Germany,” she added.
She praised the resurgence of Jewish life in Germany in recent years, seven decades after the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were exterminated.
“We would like to continue living together with Jews here in Germany,” Merkel insisted.
German foreign ministry spokeswoman Sawsan Chebli said that it was the responsibility of all members of German society to make Jews feel secure in the country.
“If Jews do not feel secure in Germany, then none of us can feel secure here,” she said.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Sunday called on European Jews to emigrate to Israel, after an attack on a synagogue in Copenhagen where a security guard was killed.
"Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews and this wave of terrorist attacks – including murderous anti-Semitic attacks – is expected to continue," Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting.
26,500 Jews migrated to Israel in 2014, the highest number in a decade. Around 8 thousand of them were from Western European countries.