Antisemitism in East Germany

East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR),^[1] was a Soviet communist puppet state that existed from 1949 to 1990.^[2] There were a few hundred Jews in East Germany, mostly Holocaust survivors who had lived in pre-war eastern Germany or had been Marxist before the 1933 Nazi takeover.^[3]

Between the 1950s and 1980s, Jews in East Germany were persecuted for following Judaism or being seen as agents of Zionism over their Jewishness.^[3] The persecution coincided with Soviet Union's persecution of her own Jews.^[4][5]

Just as in the Soviet Union, the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism in East Germany was virtually non-existent.^[3] The East German communist regime often excused its antisemitism as "anti-Zionism",^[3] despite its extensive use of antisemitic tropes in state propaganda and hostile policies towards Jewish citizens.^[3]

On December 20, 1952, the Central Committee of East Germany's ruling party declared support for the execution of Rudolf Slánský and another ten high-ranking communist officials in Czechoslovakia,^[6][7] who were accused by the Czechoslovak communist leaders of being "Zionists" over their Jewish origin.^[8]

The East German communist regime refused to take responsibility for the Nazi genocide of Jews and supported the antisemitic Arab states^[9] that repeatedly invaded Israel.^[10] East German military advisers were active in Libya, Syria and South Yemen,^[10] all of which were systemically antisemitic.^[9][11]

When West Germany made an agreement with Israel to pay Holocaust survivors reparations,^[12] the East German ruling party newspaper Neues Deutschland^[13] published the article Reparations - For Whom? in which the agreement was dismissed as "a deal between powerful West German and Israeli capitalists"^[14] – the antisemitic trope of Jews being "capitalists" was invoked.^[9][15]

East German official history emphasized communist resistance rather than Jewish suffering in the Holocaust.^[16] The fact that Nazism is fundamentally antisemitic was rarely mentioned,^[16] so were the stories of Holocaust survivors.^[16]

In history textbooks, Nazi death camps were often discussed without their antisemitic background,^[17] with the Jewish victims generalized as "inmates from all European countries" or misclassified as "the resistance".^[17] East German communist leaders did not officially commemorate the Kristallnacht^[18] until 1988,^[17] two years before East Germany ceased to exist.^[19]

Following its Soviet overlord's anti-cosmopolitan campaign, the East German communist regime harassed, detained, and interrogated several Jews on charges of "cosmopolitanism" and "spying for the West",^[16] causing many East German Jews to flee to West Berlin in 1953.^[16]

Without regard for Germany's Nazi past, the East German communist regime sent Syria 75,000 grenades, 30,000 mines, 62 tanks and 12 fighter jets to support her invasion of Israel during the Yom Kippur War.^[20]

In 1972, the East German communist regime labelled Zionism a "reactionary-nationalist ideology of the Jewish big bourgeoisie",^[21] which invoked the antisemitic trope of Jews being "capitalists". On September 18, 1973, Yosef Tekoah (1925–1991), Israel's ambassador to the UN General Assembly, said:^[22]

Israel notes with regret and repugnance that the other German state (GDR) has ignored and continues to ignore Germany's historical responsibility for the Holocaust and the moral obligations arising from it. It has compounded the gravity of that attitude by giving support and practical assistance to the campaign of violence and murder waged against Israel and the Jewish people by Arab terror organizations.

In 1975, the East German communist regime supported the now-withdrawn United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 that condemned Zionism as a form of racism.^[23]

Jewish cemeteries in East Germany were often vandalized,^[16] especially by Neo-Nazi groups that arose in the 1980s.^[16] These were ignored by the East German communist regime.^[16] Instead of protecting its Jewish citizens, the regime devoted more effort to distributing antisemitic propaganda and demanding ordinary Jews to condemn Israel.^[16]

Antisemitic broadcasting was common in East Germany and increased whenever Israel clashed with the Arab states.^[3] Those broadcasting often recycled materials from Nazi propaganda, equated Jews with Zionism, accused Jews of serving American imperialism, and blamed all of them for Israel's policies.^[3]

Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter,^[24] said that East German state propaganda was far more hostile to Jews than that of other communist countries.^[10] Meanwhile, Mike Dennis, a professor of modern German history, wrote:^[3]

Already decimated by the Holocaust, East German Jewry reeled from the shock of the SED's antisemitic campaigns.

The same propaganda was widespread in the Soviet Union and her puppet states.^[3][25] In his book A History of the Jews in the Modern World, American historian Howard Sachar stated that "anti-Zionism" in the Soviet Union and her puppet states was not much different from Nazism:^[26]

In late July 1967, Moscow launched an unprecedented propaganda campaign against Zionism as a 'world threat.' [...] an 'all-powerful international force.' [...] the new propaganda assault soon achieved Nazi-era characteristics. The Soviet public was saturated with racist canards [. ...] Yuri Ivanov's Beware: Zionism, a book essentially replicated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was given nationwide coverage.

In a 1991 interview with Jack Koehler, Simon Wiesenthal said that his efforts to track down Nazi war criminals hiding in East Germany were sabotaged by the antisemitic East German communist regime.^[27] Wiesenthal noted that East Germany was "the most antisemitic and anti-Israel in the entire Eastern Bloc",^[27] adding that:^[27]

They did nothing to help the West in tracking down Nazi war criminals, they ignored all requests from West German judicial authorities for assistance. We have just discovered shelves of files on Nazis stretching over four miles. Now we also know how the Stasi used those files. They blackmailed Nazi criminals who fled abroad after the war into spying for them.

Walter Laqueur (1921–2018), a German-American historian,^[28] summarized his research:^[29]

In the light of history, the argument that anti-Zionism is different from antisemitism is not very convincing. No one disputes that in the late Stalinist period anti-Zionism was merely a synonym for antisemitism. [...] in the Muslim [...] Arab world, the fine distinctions between Jews and Zionists hardly ever existed.

• German Jews
• Secondary antisemitism
• Anti-Judaism and antisemitism