Dr Felix Klein is the first holder of the office of Federal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight against Antisemitism. He was appointed to the post on 1 May 2018. The office of Commissioner was created in response to the intense debate over growing antisemitism in Germany and the question of how the federal level can best counter this phenomenon.

The police statistics on politically motivated crime, which also include antisemitic offences and are published annually by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community (BMI), underscore the urgency of taking action on this issue. For years now, these statistics have shown a nearly unbroken rise in antisemitic crime reported in Germany. The annual reports of the Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) reveal a similar picture.

Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic was also a key factor in the record number of antisemitic crimes (3027 offences) reported in 2021. Some 61 per cent of these crimes were cases of incitement to hatred – a category that saw an increase of 40 per cent over the previous year. This sharp increase was mainly due to the fact that the vast majority of cases of incitement connected to the COVID-19 pandemic were related to antisemitism: for example, to anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial or downplaying the suffering of Holocaust victims by using the Star of David to represent people who refuse to be vaccinated. These figures demonstrate that antisemitism remains a major problem even today.

What does this mean specifically? Everyday forms of antisemitism include open verbal attacks and insults, but also threats and, to an increasing degree, uninhibited antisemitic hate speech online. The terrible synagogue attack in Halle, Germany, in October 2019, which took the lives of two people on Yom Kippur, the most sacred Jewish holiday, with an additional 52 synagogue attendees narrowly escaping death, revealed a new dimension of violence. It represented a turning point after which the threat posed by antisemitism could no longer by denied or ignored.

Earlier, in January 2018, all parties of the German Bundestag had approved a motion calling for decisive action to combat antisemitism, thus expressing their opposition to all forms of antisemitism. By doing so, the Bundestag emphasised that combating antisemitism is not a matter for the state alone or the sole responsibility of Jews in Germany, but rather a task for society as a whole. On 18 January 2018, an overwhelming majority of the Bundestag voted to adopt the motion.

As a result, the 2018 coalition agreement stipulated that the position of Federal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight against Antisemitism was to be created. The Commissioner’s office has been set up at the BMI. An annual budget of one million euros is available to the Commissioner to fight antisemitism and promote Jewish life in Germany. To support the Commissioner’s work, 13 additional posts were created at the BMI. Some of the additional staff support the newly established Working Group on Combating Antisemitism, while others were recruited to the existing Division for Churches, Jewish Life and Religious Communities. Both of these units are located within the Directorate-General for Community, Cohesion and Democracy.

As Federal Government Commissioner, Dr Klein’s task is to coordinate the relevant measures taken by all the federal ministries. Furthermore, he serves as contact person for Jewish groups and organisations and as a liaison for federal, state and civil society measures to combat antisemitism. He also uses public outreach work as well as civic and cultural education to raise awareness of current and past forms of antisemitism. In Autumn 2022 the Federal Government’s National Strategy against Antisemitism and for Jewish Life (NASAS) was published, being its first strategy to focus exclusively on fighting antisemitism and fostering Jewish life. The development of the National Strategy was headed by the Federal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight against Antisemitism. This strategy defines researching, preventing and combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life as a task which extends across different policy areas and levels of government, requiring a holistic approach.

The Commissioner’s mandate is rooted in the specific requirements that are contained in the Bundestag resolution 19/444b, which are based on the report of the Independent Panel on Antisemitism (18/11970).

Since Dr Felix Klein was appointed in 2018, he has coordinated and provided impetus for the implementation of many of these requirements, including four of the five key requirements:

• The standing Joint Federal and State Commission (link to German website) to fight antisemitism and protect Jewish life was founded in September 2019 to coordinate measures at state and federal level. The commission is co-chaired by the Federal Government Commissioner and a state commissioner in rotation. To date, 15 federal states have appointed antisemitism commissioners or pledged that they will do so.
• Also in September 2019, a group of independent advisers (link to German website) consisting of Jewish and non-Jewish experts was set up to support the Commissioner’s work. These independent advisers bring expertise from academia, education and civil society to assist the Commissioner.
• Support for the step-by-step establishment nationwide of rigorous recording, documenting and publishing of antisemitic incidents which do not constitute a criminal offence, and closer cooperation between civil society and security authorities.
• The start of long-term funding programmes for research into antisemitism.

The German Bundestag’s resolution of 18 January 2018 calls on the Federal Government to report on the implementation status and evaluation of the Independent Panel on Antisemitism’s 2017 recommendations (PDF in German) for action. In September 2020, the Federal Government submitted the first such report, which was published on 11 September 2020 by the German Bundestag as Bundestag printed paper 19/22389 (PDF in German). In future, the Federal Government will submit a report to the German Bundestag every four years on the progress made in combating antisemitism in Germany.