Alongside the joyful celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, our thoughts are with the many Jewish victims of the Reichspogromnacht of the night of 9 to 10 November 1938. On that night the Nazis felt sure enough of their cause for the first time to carry out a coordinated, nationwide campaign of hatred and killing against Germany’s Jews. This could happen because the society of the day for the most part looked on or looked away as their Jewish neighbours were beaten, imprisoned and killed. Synagogues and Jewish businesses burned or were damaged. The Nazis knew that the indifference, and indeed the approval, of the population was assured them.
Today, 81 years later, we are once again seeing the beginnings of that indifference, when Jews are harassed, threatened and murdered for no other reason than that they are Jews. Within the German Jewish community this is producing a growing climate of mentally packed suitcases. There is mounting doubt as to whether a Jewish future in Germany is secure. Society is coming under ever greater pressure, above all from radical right-wing and left-wing forces and from Islamists. Relieving society of this pressure should henceforth be the guiding principle of German federal policy. It will be necessary to develop a concept for safeguarding society which must ensure, on many levels, that extremist currents of every stripe are deprived of their breeding ground. Here, education must be strengthened for the long term and laws and sentencing ranges adapted to present-day conditions. Those who hate must feel in concrete terms that they have no place in this society. With the right words alone, the fight against a society drifting apart can no longer be won. A resolute state, with a values-conscious society, is becoming ever more necessary. Fostering this is what drives us.
