Volkswagen Funds ADL Office In Germany For Combating Anti-Semitism

German Volkswagen Transporter retro van parked at the city street. Image by iStock

By Ron Kampeas June 4, 2019

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Volkswagen, the car manufacturing giant, is joining with the Anti-Defamation League to fund a Berlin-based office that will research and combat anti-Semitism in Europe.

“The initiative will focus on assessing the root causes of anti-Semitism, extremism, and bigotry in society and develop programs to counter it through advocacy and education,” ADL said in a release Tuesday.

A Volkswagen spokesman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the venture would open an ADL office in Berlin, the first ADL presence in Europe in more than a decade. The funding, over the three years, would be in the low seven figures, the official said, with an option to expand and continue the initiative thereafter.

Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen Group, the largest car manufacturer in the world, announced the bid Monday at the ADL’s annual Washington conference. In an interview with JTA, he said he was concerned about the recent spike in anti-Semitism in Europe, and that Volkswagen had a special obligation to combat racism because of its origins in Nazi Germany.

“We have more obligation than others,” he said. “The whole company was built up by the Nazi regime.”

The initiative will have four components: Education in schools, education in workplaces, lobbying in European capitals, and research through surveys.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO