OLD HABITS RETURN: Antisemitic Incidents In Germany Hit Most Ever Recorded Since Holocaust

The number of antisemitic incidents recorded in Germany in 2025 climbed to a record 8,725, the country’s main civil-society monitor said Wednesday, capping a third straight year of historically high anti-Jewish hostility since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel in October 2023.

The figure, released in the annual report of the Berlin-based Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism, known as RIAS, was up by 98 from the 8,627 incidents logged in 2024. It was more than triple the 2,480 incidents the group documented in 2022, before the war in Gaza.

RIAS said incidents have stayed at a consistently high level since Oct. 7, 2023, and continue to shape daily life for Jews in Germany. The group attributed roughly two-thirds of the 2025 cases, about 68 percent, to what it classifies as Israel-related antisemitism.

The 2025 count included 178 assaults and 257 incidents involving threats. RIAS documented four cases it labeled extreme violence, among them a terrorist attack at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin.

Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said the total works out to about 24 incidents a day. “These are not statistical outliers; it is the grim reality in Germany,” he said in a statement, adding that the report shows antisemitism hardening at record levels rather than easing.

Many of the cases logged by RIAS occurred in everyday settings. In Kehl, a western border town near Strasbourg, four members of the Jewish community were insulted and spat on outside a shul. In the central state of Hesse, a rabbi was shoved in a supermarket in front of his children and had his cellphone snatched. RIAS said the people who carried out that attack referred to Israel during the assault.

The group, which records both criminal offenses and incidents that fall below the threshold of a crime, said hostility increasingly centers on the label “Zionist.” It cited graffiti calling for violence against Zionists and a physical attack in Kassel in which the victim was first insulted as a “Zionist pig” and then assaulted.

RIAS operates a network of regional reporting offices, and their separate 2025 reports, issued earlier this spring, fill in the national picture.

In Berlin, RIAS counted 2,197 incidents, an average of about six a day. That was down roughly 13 percent from the 2,521 cases recorded in the capital in 2024, but still more than double the level seen before October 2023. Between 2018 and 2022, RIAS logged fewer than 1,000 incidents a year in Berlin. The Berlin office reported 40 violent incidents during the year, including a February stabbing at the Holocaust Memorial in which a young man was wounded in the neck. It also documented antisemitic occurrences at 239 demonstrations and rallies, the most it has ever recorded.

In Hesse, RIAS noted a record of about 1,099 incidents, an 18 percent rise from the previous year and nearly six times the level recorded before the war. Hesse’s antisemitism commissioner, Uwe Becker, said in a statement that the threat to Jewish life is worse than at any time since the Holocaust. The head of the regional RIAS office said full participation in society is no longer unconditionally possible for Jews in the state.

In Bavaria, RIAS documented 1,551 incidents, with researchers pointing to a growing share tied to Israel-related narratives and a sharp rise in online abuse.

The numbers track a broader pattern across Germany since late 2023. RIAS records all reported antisemitic incidents, a wider net than police hate-crime statistics, which capture only criminal offenses. The group says that approach is meant to make visible what it calls the “dark field” of antisemitism that never reaches law enforcement.

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