Wolfgang Benz wrote the book on anti-Semitism in Germany – several, in fact. The 83-year-old historian has produced an eight-volume standard work as well as popular books explaining the phenomenon to a wider audience.
It is thanks to his 1991 Dimensions of Genocide, pulling together 17 regional studies of historical sources, that we have a confirmed Holocaust death toll of between 5.29 and 6.1 million.
After decades shaping German memory work on the Nazi era, however, Benz tells The Irish Times he is “a little frustrated that it was all for nothing”.
He worries the October 7th Hamas attacks have polarised an already charged public discourse in Germany on Israel, with politicians now chasing a surge in anti-Semitism that, Benz says, is a mirage created by special interest groups.
“After the catastrophe of the Holocaust, the fact that there is anti-Semitism in this country is bad enough,” says Benz, who headed the Centre for anti-Semitism Research at Berlin’s Technical University for 21 years until 2010. “But claims that anti-Semitism is continually rising here are simply not true.”
The historian insists he has “no sympathy” for those behind the “brutal, cowardly terrorist attacks” of October 7th yet “still feels empathy for the great majority of the Palestinian civilian population whose homes have been destroyed in retaliatory strikes, who are starving and are afraid of dying”.
Expressing such views in public is not a given in Germany, he says, something he attributes to the “strenuous work of some groups” linked to Israel.
“The majority in Germany is convinced now that even the slightest criticism of the actions of Israel’s government or military is already anti-Semitism – and no one wants to stand under suspicion of that,” says Benz.
Those are fighting words for many in Germany’s Jewish community, left deeply unsettled by the October attacks – and worried about the consequences for them here.
In a December survey carried out by the Central Council of Jews in Germany, almost 80 per cent of its 105 communities said their members felt less safe since October 7th. Many cited threatening phone calls, anti-Jewish graffiti and – in one case in Berlin – a petrol bomb attack on a community centre.
Germany’s federal crime statistics noted 2,249 anti-Semitic incidents in the three months from October to January – nearly the same as averages of 2,400 incidents in each of the two previous years.
While Jewish community leaders – and German politicians – warn of a surge in anti-Semitism, Benz says such surges are not surprising after extreme events involving Israel. These are not per se proof of a sustained rise in anti-Semitism, he says, with demoscopic surveys indicating the opposite. A biennial Leipzig study indicates a decline – from 9.5 to 3.2 per cent of the population – in anti-Semitic views over the period 2002-2022.
A Forsa poll for Stern magazine last December found 14 per cent of German respondents agreed with the claim that “Jews have too much influence in the world” – down from 28 per cent when Forsa/Stern last asked the question in 2003.
That echoes a Berlin-only survey from December 2023, where 15 per cent backed the claim that “the influence of Jews is too great”.
Presenting their Berlin survey, its authors flagged another source of concern: even in multicultural Berlin, 20 per cent of those questioned expressed views “hostile to Muslims” while 48 per cent held strong views “hostile to Islam”.
These numbers reflect an argument Benz has made in the last decade: that anti-Semitism in Germany can only be tackled effectively as part of a wider push – involving research, education and campaigns – against discrimination of minorities in general.
“I have been ostracised in some quarters for saying that we need to avoid courting one minority to the exclusion of others,” he said.
His critics insist anti-Semitism is different and should be treated as such. Some suggest, with his position, Benz is relativising the Holocaust. That is a claim he dismisses, but he senses greater pushback since October 7th. He has been invited to, then uninvited from two recent events on anti-Semitism – leaving him to wonder whether Germans have learned the lessons of their history.
“Familiar methods from back then,” he said, “are being used now to cast suspicion on another minority – Muslims – and denounce them as a threat because of their religion.”
Though retired for 12 years, Benz continues to publish and is not a lone, ageing voice in the wilderness. Younger colleagues in the field back him, such as sociologist Peter Ullrich. An author and co-editor of the recent book What is anti-Semitism?, he says Germany’s debate on this issue is increasingly emotional and over-simplified.
“It is almost fully concentrated on Israel,” said Ullrich, “while extreme-right anti-Semitism in Germany – quantitatively the larger problem – is relatively rarely discussed.”
After a long career, Benz says he has nothing to prove. The personal attacks bother him far less, he says, than those who “refuse to accept the mechanisms of discrimination in Germany today”.
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