Muslim assaults, bullying and death threats against Jews surge in German schools

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From the Miami Herald:

BERLIN “Should I tell my students?” Jewish teachers in Germany’s public schools are grappling with the question of whether it is safe and appropriate to reveal their identity amid a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the nation’s schools. 

“It took me a while until I had the self-confidence to tell people,” said 41-year old school teacher Michal Schwartze, who worried early on in her career that she could be seen as biased as she teaches history and politics. 

Eventually Schwartze decided that she couldn’t hide her Jewish perspectives and personal activism against racism and discrimination. 

“I think it’s important to take a position, and to be explicit about my stance,” she said. But 32-year-old Berlin-based teacher Anna Furer, on the other hand, does not want her students to know she’s Jewish, especially not the one who praised Adolf Hitler. 

“I’m trying to ignore this as much as I can, but at the end of the day I have feelings, too,” she said, referring to the student’s anti-Semitic remarks in the past. She is scared of someone in the classroom eventually finding out how much such comments affect her. 

Anti-Semitism still - or once again - poses a challenge to the over 200,000 Jews who are estimated to live in Germany. While police statistics suggest that anti-Semitic incidents have occurred at a similar rate across the country for years, incidents have mounted in some cities, including in Germany’s capital Berlin. 

According to numbers released by German authorities on Wednesday, numbers surged by more than 10 percent year-on-year and a fifth of anti-Semitic hate crimes in Germany - a category that includes violent or verbal attacks - are now committed in Berlin.