New Data: Anti-Semitism Incidents in Berlin Surged by Nearly 20 Percent Last Year Amid Covid Pandemic

More than 1,000 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in Berlin in 2020, an almost 20-percent rise from the previous year, according to new data published this week by RIAS, an anti-Semitism monitoring group based in the German capital.

A RIAS statement cited by The Algemeiner said nearly one in five of the 1,004 incidents were related to the Covid-19 pandemic through “the spread of antisemitic conspiracy myths, perpetrator-victim reversals and Holocaust trivializations.”

There were also 123 cases of anti-Semitic leafleting, 51 cases of threatening behavior, and 43 cases of property damage. Furthermore, there were 17 physical attacks.

“One thing is clear: Berlin has an antisemitism problem,” Samuel Salzborn, anti-Semitism commissioner for the state of Berlin, commented.

Sigmount Königsberg — the Berlin Jewish community’s officer for countering anti-Semitism – noted, “Every day there are three antisemitic attacks in Berlin.”

Also this week, the anti-Semitism commissioner for the state of Thuringia, in central Germany, issued a report showing there had been 116 anti-Semitic incidents there last year — a 25-percent increase from 2019.