I've now been in Germany for over a month, on a research fellowship at the Ruhr-Universität in Bochum, Germany. It's really a great opportunity, and I've been getting a lot of work done. I have been upset to find out, however, that there seems to be a fair amount of far right and Neonazi activity in this area of Germany, in particular in the city of Dortmund, which is close to Bochum.
A member of a Neonazi party who holds a seat in the Dortmund (Germany) city council has requested that the local government count the Jews in Dortmund according to districts of the city. There has been a strong pushback by both the mayor of Dortmund, other members of the city council, and the head of the central council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann.
The story has gotten some press outside of Germany too - in the Times of Israel (quoting from the German newspapers) -
http://www.timesofisrael.com/germans-outraged-as-far-right-party-requests-data-on-jews/, and in Ynet -
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4592100,00.html
Neonazis want to count Jews
- In a petition to the city of Dortmund, the
Neonazi party “Die Rechte” asks about counting all Jews
- The mayor and the central council of Jews
condemn this provocation sharply
- The city of Dortmund announces that it is giving
only the “legally possible minimum response”
On Thursday, the Neonazi party “Die Rechte” sought not only
marshals for a hooligan demonstration on Saturday, it also filed an official
petition to the city council whose antisemitism is obvious. Dennis Giemisch,
its only representative to the city council, asked how many Jews lived in
Dortmund. Also, the city should break down the number according to districts.
The petition was relevant “for political work” of the party.
Dortmund: Nazis on a hunt after Jews
The Right: Dortmund’s strong right-wing party
Petition for the meeting of the
city council of Dortmund on 11-13-2014
I request to include the following
petition in the agenda of the council of the city of Dortmund for 11.13.2014
and to be answered by you or the administration
Jewish citizens in Dortmund
1)
How many people of the Jewish faith are
currently known in Dortmund (as of October 2014)? Does the city of Dortmund
have official numbers in which the believers are registered?
2)
Is it possible to divide the number of people of
Jewish faith according to city districts?
Justification:
In order to find an appropriate way
to deal with all religions, it is necessary to find out their importance in our
city. For our political work the number of people of Jewish faith living in
Dortmund is relevant.
The Nazi-party Die Rechte wants to know how many and where
Jews in Dortmund live. The Right council member Dennis Giemsch, a computer
science student at the Technical University of Dortmund, placed the request
today.
The Nordrhein-Westfalen interior ministry will certainly
read the request with interest, if it is seeking reasons to ban Die Rechte.
Despite some pretense at the end of the request, a further building block for
prohibition proceedings has now been laid.
Back to Süddeutsche Zeitung
That a radical right party wants to count Jewish citizens
creates anxiety not only for the Jewish community. Organized discrimination
against minorities is usually preceded by the registration of people according
to ethnic or religious background – whether before the genocide in Rwanda, or
in Germany from 1933-1945. For the murder of the European Jews, the Gestapo
drew up in advance a Jewish card file on the basis of the membership lists of
the Jewish communities. This happened also in the areas occupied by Germany. From
Dortmund more than 2,000 Jews were murdered in concentration camps, and the
community was destroyed.
Giemsch sits in the council since Siegfried Borchardt, known
as “SS-Siggi” (he would rather be called “SA-Siggi”), withdrew from the city
council.
Hypocritical Request
Dortmund’s mayor Ullrich Sierau (SPD), commenting in a press
release, calls the request “inhuman” and stands behind the Jewish community of
his city: “We are pleased about every child, every woman and every man of the
Jewish faith, who wants to live together with us in Dortmund.” It is good that
the community today has again 3700 members. He will also turn over the request
to the state police, who are concerned with politically motivated criminality.
The Central Council of Jews [in Germany] condemned the provocation. Its
distinguished chairman, Dieter Graumann, said to the Westdeutschen Allgemeinen
Zeitung: “One must and can know the true motivation for this thoroughly
hypocritical request: obnoxious and perfidious antisemitism.”
Any council member can place a request before the
administration. The request will be answered in the next meeting of the city
council. On Twitter the press office of the city of Dortmund made it known that
the Nazis have to await only the “legally possible minimum response.”
In any case, the party is at the wrong address in the city.
Religious affiliation is officially recognized in Germany (from the painful
experience with National Socialism) only for those individuals who pay the
church tax – that is only for members of the Catholic and major Protestant
churches. Figures on religious affiliation from the census are pretty useless
for minorities, the Federal Statistics Office explains. Adherents of Hinduism,
Buddhism, Islam and Judaism have often voluntarily waived stating their
religion.
Another local newspaper has a series of articles on "The Nazi Problem in Dortmund" -
http://www.ruhrnachrichten.de/das+nazi-problem+in+dortmund. There's also an article in the New York Times about the election of the Neonazi Siegfried Borchardt to the Dortmund city council -
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/world/europe/a-neo-nazis-political-rise-exposes-a-german-citys-ethnic-tensions.html. Giemsch succeeded Borchardt after he had been in office for only about a month.
