Germany To Fund Anti-Semitism Education for Muslim Youth
Germany is ready to allocate funds to tailor education about anti-Semitism for its Muslim citizens, its Jewish outreach official said.
Felix Klein, Germany’s special representative for relations with Jewish organizations, is in Washington this week to meet with Jewish groups and with Obama administration officials because of American concerns about a spike in anti-Semitism in Germany during the recent Israel-Hamas conflict in the Gaza Strip.
Many of the offenders were Muslims, and many of those were members of Germany’s substantial Turkish minority.
“Sometimes, we hear it is difficult to teach the Holocaust” to Muslim students, Klein told JTA in an interview Wednesday at the German embassy in Washington.
“We would give special tools that would interest young Muslims, that would incorporate the role of Turkey” during World War II, he said.
Klein said there was a “feeling of unease” among Germany’s 100,000 Jews after the spate of anti-Semitic incidents.
He said the money for such an initiative would come from Germany’s Interior Ministry and its Ministry for Families, Youth and the Elderly and from regional governments.
Klein during his visit met State Department officials who deal with anti-Semitism and Holocaust issues as well as with officials of the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and B’nai B’rith International.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO