Merz Warns of 'Omnipresent' Antisemitism at Kristallnacht Memorial in Munich

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz used a memorial ceremony at Munich's Ohel Jakob Synagogue on Monday to warn that antisemitism has become "omnipresent" in Germany once more, speaking from a site that shares its name with a synagogue destroyed during the Nazi pogroms of November 1938.

Merz said hostility toward Jews can be seen and heard on the streets, in cities across Germany and neighbouring European countries, and in parliaments, associations and schools around the world. He added that it is sometimes cloaked in the language of anti-colonial struggles or criticism of Israel, and at other times justified through a distortion of history.

The event marked the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of 9-10 November 1938, when synagogues were set alight and Jewish homes, businesses and communal centres were ransacked across Germany and Austria. Among those listening was Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, who was six years old when the pogrom took place. Merz told the 94-year-old, also a vice president of the European and World Jewish Congresses, that she had lived through what no child should ever have to experience.

Quoting a biblical verse from the Book of Numbers from which the synagogue takes its name, the chancellor said he could not imagine how those words must have sounded to people awakened in 1938 by armed squads breaking into their homes and businesses with stones, axes and petrol canisters, or to the millions later deported to concentration camps.

The warning comes as new figures show antisemitic incidents in Germany reached a record 8,725 in 2025, according to the Berlin-based Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism. That is slightly above the 8,627 recorded in 2024 and more than triple the 2,480 logged in 2022. The 2025 tally included 178 assaults and 257 cases involving threats, with 68 percent of all incidents linked to Israel.

The data underlines concerns among German officials that anti-Jewish sentiment is spreading even decades after the Holocaust, and that commemorations of Kristallnacht are increasingly being used to call for vigilance against contemporary forms of hatred.