Hatred, the Home Edition

In October 1945, 86 Jewish victims were buried at the municipal cemetery in the Robertsau district of Strasbourg. They had been discovered after the city’s liberation from German occupation in the premises of the anatomical institute at the medical faculty of the University of Strasbourg. The victims had been brought from Auschwitz in the summer of 1943 at the initiative of the Nazi professor Dr August Hirt. They were murdered in a gas chamber built specifically for this purpose at the Struthof-Natzweiler camp and their bodies were then transported to Strasbourg.

Dr Hirt had "ordered" the bodies because he wanted to create a collection of skeletons to "prove" the racial inferiority of Jews. At the anatomical institute, the corpses were placed in vats filled with formaldehyde—until Dr Hirt simply forgot about them, at least until Allied forces approached Strasbourg in the fall of 1944. At that point, the remains of 57 men and 29 women were mutilated to hinder identification. Dr Hirt ended his project by extracting the victims’ gold teeth and pocketing them. Wikipedia describes Hirt as a "physician, torturer, and university professor." He spent most of his life near the Black Forest, where he put a bullet in his head in June 1945.

But the story doesn’t end there. Four years ago, a book titled Hippocrates in Hell claimed that containers holding the remains of the murdered Jews still exist at the institute. The book caused a scandal, and the University of Strasbourg responded by establishing an international commission of inquiry—which has not yet completed its work. The possibility that generations of Strasbourg medical students trained in rooms where dusty shelves still hide traces of horrific crimes against Jews preserved in formaldehyde is an allegory for European antisemitism. For a long time, hatred was hidden in the darkest corners of our consciousness. Now, it is reemerging, boldly and brazenly.

A 2018 report from the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights states that 86% of Jews in Europe feel threatened. And this is not just about subjective feelings or oversensitivity. In just the past few weeks, Strasbourg and its surroundings saw antisemitic graffiti appear at the school attended by my older children, the destruction of a memorial to the synagogue burned down during the war, and the desecration of nearly a hundred graves in the Jewish cemetery in the nearby village of Quatzenheim.

There are several reasons for this renewed surge in antisemitism.

First, ignorance of history. In France, 20% of young people between 18 and 34 have never heard of the Holocaust. In some places—including Slovenia—this ignorance is actively encouraged. The constant droning that we must leave history behind is irresponsible, even if not intended to relativize its lessons. Short-sightedness and political opportunism are no excuse for downplaying how forgetting yesterday’s crimes feeds today’s hatred.

Second, the internet. American historian Timothy Snyder said during a recent lecture at the Council of Europe that we are all dumber today than we were ten years ago—because of the internet. The only reason we don’t notice it, he said, is because we’re all dumber together. As an example, he cited the resurgence of conspiracy theories about a global Jewish plot.

Third, the normalization of hate. A CNN-commissioned study found that 20% of Europeans believe antisemitism is a justified response to Jewish behaviour. Politics is partly to blame—even here in Slovenia. The silence or even tacit justification of hatred in the name of free speech by high-ranking officials, even in cases involving Holocaust denial or claims that this greatest crime in human history—the murder of six million people—was a Jewish conspiracy, is a textbook example of extreme political irresponsibility.

Latent antisemitism—which never truly disappeared, only sat quietly like those jars of formaldehyde at the Strasbourg anatomy institute—is once again gaining momentum. Parts of European politics and media are now openly playing the antisemitic card. Not long ago, the supposedly independent Hungarian magazine Figyelő ran a photoshopped cover of András Heisler, president of Hungary’s Jewish community federation, with banknotes raining down on him. At this year’s carnival in Aalst, Belgium, a float featured Jewish caricatures that would not have been out of place in Der Stürmer. The far-right Polish weekly Tylko Polska ("Only Poland") recently published a front-page guide on how to recognize a Jew—by names, anthropological features, facial expressions, appearance, personality traits, behavior, and methods of deceiving the public.

Although the victims of the recent New Zealand attack were Muslims, it is part of the same story. The Christchurch killer and Robert Bowers, who murdered eleven people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh months earlier, are inhuman twins. Whether the target is Jews, Muslims, or others, these terrorist attacks are thematic variations of the same hatred and blindness.

Fourth, antisemitism among some immigrants from majority-Muslim countries—both those who have lived in Europe for generations and those who arrived more recently. The quenelle salute—a kind of inverted Nazi salute made popular by controversial comedian Dieudonné—is popular among youth in French suburbs and on social media. This must not be ignored. Turning a blind eye to the presence of extreme views among a minority within this population only aids those who seek to generalize and stigmatize the overwhelming majority that rejects hatred and violence.

This type of antisemitism is not rooted in traditional European prejudices but is largely fueled by Middle Eastern conflicts. And this leads us to the fifth and final chapter of Europe’s antisemitic revival: antisemitism on parts of the European left.

Linking criticism of Israel to antisemitism is a delicate matter. Israeli policy often tries to use this linkage to discredit entirely legitimate criticism of its frequently unacceptable actions. On the other hand, it is also true that part of the left tries to mask its latent antisemitism as criticism of Israel. Drawing the line between the two is too complex for this column, but I believe that a clear and unconditional condemnation of all forms of antisemitism only strengthens the credibility of justified criticism of Israeli policies.

That this is a problem for parts of the European left is evident in the ongoing struggle of the British Labour Party to root out deeply entrenched antisemitism in its ranks. Conspiracy theories about Jewish global cabals, hook-nosed bankers with fat cigars—these are becoming more common among France’s gilets jaunes ("yellow vests"), whose colour is, with rising antisemitism, starting to take on a brown hue.

A quarter of Europeans believe Jews have too much influence in business and finance. The stigmatization and attacks on entire groups or social classes—which originally emerged from legitimate outrage over systemic social injustice—end up discrediting and weakening those movements. Instead of criticizing the system, we increasingly hear insults aimed at people. Mindless sloganeering against “the elites” is becoming indistinguishable from far-right rants about Soros—a universal weapon to discredit anyone populists see as an obstacle to power.

The circle is complete. Parts of the radical left and the far right now jointly promote conspiracies, stereotypes, caricatures, patterns, and discourses of traditional European antisemitism. Across Europe, in plain view, a competition in prejudice against fellow humans is playing out.

Welcome to the reality show: Hatred, the Home Edition.

On all our screens. And in front of them.