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The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, expresses concern about radicalization and the forgetting of history during the protests against the Corona protective measures.
"Anyone who compares the situation today with what happened in the Third Reich, who feels like Sophie Scholl, who had to pay with her life for her commitment, simply has no idea of history, of history, including recent German history," said Schuster the Deutschlandfunk.
He spoke of a loud, sometimes radical, minority, but one couldn't say that they had taken on an opinion leadership.
Not all who protest against the corona rules should be placed under general suspicion.
"That there are people who feel restricted in their basic rights by the restriction of personal freedom is understandable for me at least in theory," he said.
But if those who demonstrate benevolently, in particular by right-wing extremists, are infiltrated and then anti-Jewish conspiracy myths are represented, then that has left the “still understandable or perhaps comprehensible area” for him, said Schuster to Deutschlandfunk in the interview published in advance on Friday
He himself thinks the government's corona protective measures are fundamentally correct.
In his opinion, however, an earlier lockdown would have made sense, said the doctor.
"But in hindsight you are always smarter," he added.
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Schuster sees a "more uninhibited anti-Semitism in words" that he could not have imagined a few years ago.
He blamed functionaries of the AfD, some of whom called for a "change in the culture of remembrance by 180 degrees".
This leads to what one has not dared to say for a long time, "becomes sayable and socially acceptable".
In the next stage, words would lead to deeds, as was the case with the synagogue attack in Halle in October 2019.
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