Dear readers!
Now, that we Jews celebrated Rosh HaShana, the “head of the year”, read the Jewish New Year, and thus Yom Kippur is around the corner I want to write here about something that was very concerning for the Jewish community in the German-speaking world in the last year. Namely, with the terror-attack in the German city of Halle.
First and foremost, I have to write something controversial. That is to say that in my opinion the process in Halle reveals something that I presumed in the last couple of years: That the majority of the Non-Jewish society sees us at best as tolerated minority and not as integral part of the very fabric that makes this society. But let me elaborate that a little bit.
Firstly, how the Jewish congregations in Halle and elsewhere were treated before the process is telling a lot. Mainly because legitimate concerns and fears in regards of security of said congregations were not taken seriously by the authorities who were responsible for the security in the first place. This led to the fact that the Jewish congregation in Halle was forced to pay for their own security primarily out of their own pocket. The authorities in charge treated human beings with obviously legitimate concerns, their own citizens, like pesky beggars and therefore the authorities haggled like on a bazaar to pay the absolute minimum imaginable in regards of the costs for security for the Jewish congregations in Halle and elsewhere. Because of this the terror-attack in Halle was possible in the first place. For the simple reason that the absolutely legitimate fears of the Jewish congregation were obviously not taken seriously nor was there ever a sustainable plan conceived how such terror-attacks could be prevented neither what to do if such terror-attacks happened. The reality in Europe is the following: Synagogues and other Jewish buildings like day-cares and schools have to be protected with bullet-proof-glass and the like because of Anti-Semites who want us to murder even on Yom Kippur.
As different media has reported a police-car was actually driven by when the assassin, Stephan Baillet, who was heavily armed was standing next to the synagogue in Halle. What did those federal-officers in the police-car do? The continued to drive by because the police-officers thought that a movie was shot there. Therefore, Stephan Baillet could fueled by his delusions kill two completely innocent people. During his process other inconvenient truths came to the surface like the fact that the assassin knew more about Jewish culture and holidays and fast-days (Yom Kippur is not celebratory day but rather a day of fast and atonement) than the local police-force. Therefore, there the synagogue in Halle had not even on Yom Kippur police protection and thus why the police-officers took a while to arrive at the synagogue after the emergency-calls from the synagogues came, and only due the fact that the guns and explosive devices that the assailant made by himself were faulty, that there were not more victims.
And this is the core of problem! Not only do anti-Semites of different ideologies try take their anger out on us Jews, because they blame us for Covid-19, migration, feminism and the pathetic state of the Islamic world, the overall majority of this society simply does not care and ignores murderous antisemitism as much as humanly possible. This became obvious in the process of Halle. As a an acquittance of mine, who was present at the process, and told me about it, the footage of the terror-attack was shown among the footage were also the recordings of the surveillance-camera of the synagogue. This footage is not for the faint of the heart but clearly shows the fact that Stephan Baillet is the assassin.
Now the question arises, how his family with whom he lived could have missed how and why he made and hoarded those weapons that he later used for the terror-attack in the first place. Also why did the police-force in Halle react the way it reacted before, during and after the attack. One should not forget that Stephan Baillet almost escaped from the remand center “Roter Ochse”, that lies in the middle of the city of Halle. For almost five minutes the assassin could freely move around the remand center and only the fact that one door was locked kept him from escaping further. German authorities have apparently very naive misconceptions about assassins and envision them as misunderstood petty criminals. Because there is no other way, I can explain to myself this almost criminal recklessness in regards of radicalized violent predators.
But even after the process in Halle ends the whole ordeal will continue to haunt us Jews. Because I elaborated above the issue of «security» remains something important for my community. As the German-Jewish news-paper “Jüdische Allgemeine» wrote on the 17th September 2020 the federal government in Germany now wants to support Jewish establishments with additional 22 million Euros that can be used to for security. In my opinion it is a tragedy that this money is needed in the first place and that it took an actual tragedy for the German authorities to act on this matter. Human beings had to be killed first that before the authorities believed us Jews that we are actually threatened and not being paranoid. What the Non-Jewish majority thinks is a completely different matter however and is written in the comment-sections of different daily news-papers. One can read them at one owns risk. As a consequence of all of this we Jews will continue to face anti-Semitism in the new year and as consequence thereof the violent danger to our lives and our existence as Jews in Europe.