Germany’s largest Jewish community in the capital city removed its logo on envelopes containing its monthly magazine to protect members from anti-Semitic attacks.
In a statement to The Jerusalem Post on Friday, the Berlin Jewish community spokesman Ilan Kiesling said, “Despite considerably higher costs, the community’s executive board decided to send the community magazine in a neutral envelope, in order to reduce the hostility toward our more than 10,000 members. Many community members were thinking about cancelling their subscription.”
The security measure to send the magazine “Jewish Berlin” in an unmarked envelope was formulated as part of new security protocols with the police and the security department of the Berlin Jewish community.
“It is a sad reality that a large part of Jewish life for years has taken place behind bulletproof glass, barbed wire and security access controls,” said Kiesling.
He added the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen, which resulted in Islamic terrorists killing five Jews, have created a new situation leading to “great insecurity” among community members.
Kiesling said the community has observed by registration for Jewish kindergartens and schools that parents “wish to be informed exactly about security measures.” The community works with the police and the Berlin Senate administration to” strengthen the security of our institutions.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday, "We are glad and thankful that there is Jewish life in Germany again. And we would like to continue living well together with the Jews who are in Germany today.”
In his Die Welt column titled “More protection for Jews means less dignity” on Thursday, Henryk M. Broder, Germany’s leading expert on contemporary anti-Semitism, criticized the fortress-like security measures to protect Jews as an illusion.
“It will not become better. It will become worse. Toulouse was the prelude to Brussels and Brussels led to Paris. Copenhagen will not be the final station. The list of attacks will become longer,” wrote Broder.
In 2012, a French-Algerian Islamist killed four French Jews. Two years later, a French Muslim Islamic State fighter used an automatic weapon to kill four people, including two Israelis, at the Brussels Jewish museum.
Broder wrote, “What we are now experiencing is not a renaissance of Jewish life in Germany and Europe, rather the end of an experiment,” adding “murderous anti-Semitism is not a master from Germany. It belongs in the meantime to Europe like the imported Islamism which enables anti-Semitism.”
In response to the wave of lethal anti-Semitism across Europe, Josef Schuster, the head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, said that Jewish life “still is possible in Germany.”
The Merkel administration has rejected a ban of the so-called political wing of Hezbollah in Germany. The United States, Israel, the Netherlands and Canada designated Hezbollah’s entire organization as a terrorist entity. According to Germany’s most recent intelligence report, there are 950 active Hezbollah members in Germany, including 250 in Berlin.
A statement attributed to Hezbollah’s leader’s Hassan Nasrallah, states, “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say the Israeli.”
Hezbollah’s blew up an Israeli tour bus in 2012, resulting in the murder of five Israelis and their Bulgaria bus driver in the sea-side resort of Burgas.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged European Jews to immigrate to Israel because of the terror attacks in France and Copenhagen.