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We were on our way to the Yom Kippur service when the news reached us. Shooting in front of the synagogue, the worshipers have barricaded themselves, so far two dead, details are still unclear.
The first thought: Now it has happened. But the terrorist attack on the Jewish community - unlike what I feared - did not take place in Berlin, but in Halle. In the days before, many Berlin Jews had thought with fear and worry that the 23-year-old Syrian Mohamad M. could go to Yom Kippur a second time to commit a terrorist attack.
On Friday last week, the young man in front of the Oranienburger Strasse Synagogue pulled out his combat knife, called "Allahu Akbar" and "Fuck Israel" - and was released immediately after his arrest the next morning. The public prosecutor's office obviously saw no danger. It is fortunate that he did not attack the Jewish community again.
Well, then, Halle. One acquaintance, the Berlin Jew Anastassia Pletoukhina, was in the same synagogue in Halle at the time of the assassination. She and the other worshipers only survived with much luck. Had the culprit been a little more professional, it would have been a massacre, a terrible bloodbath. The offender would have had an easy time.
The morning after the assassination, I reached Anastassia in her hotel room. She looked calm and composed, even more focused than usual. She told me about the attack: "After the first shots we ran upstairs and hid ourselves. (...) Then we heard loud shots again and again, the security man pursued everything He and several other men, including my husband, barricaded the front door with chairs, tables, and other items in case the culprit overcomes the door . "
Yes, in fact, it was close. There was no police protection in the synagogue - despite the repeated requests of the community chief. Still yesterday, on Thursday, one day after the attack, the Minister of the Interior of Saxony-Anhalt said that in the past there had been no danger to the Jewish community.
Well, everyone who wanted to see it had to see it. It is only a matter of time in Germany until a community is threatened - and then adequate protection is essential. Anyone who speaks of surprising events now has a disturbed relationship to reality. For years, the Jewish community has been confronted with such attacks - be it 2014 in Wuppertal, 2000 in Dusseldorf or 2003 in the planned bomb attack in Munich. All isolated cases? Of course not.
And verbally in Germany, the campaign of anti-Semites against the Jewish community has long been in progress. AfD chief Alexander Gauland calls the line under the Nazi past and wants to be proud again "on the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars." His colleague Björn Höcke is to cultivate the open dealing with neo-Nazis convicted of violent crimes like Thorsten Heise from the "free comradeship scene".
Every summer in Berlin, Islamists demonstrate for the destruction of Israel on the Al-Quds march. Also all individual cases? Certainly not, as two examples, again from Berlin, show for the past seven months alone. In March, former PFLP terrorist Rasmea Odeh, sentenced for her involvement in an explosive bomb attack in Jerusalem in 1969 with two Jewish deaths, entered Germany. And in September, two Palestinian rappers in front of the Brandenburg Gate wanted to sing about their dream of bombing Tel Aviv and slaughtering Israelis. The performance was denied at the last moment after massive political and media pressure, but their music was still heard on the approved demonstration.
The reactions of the politically responsible to mobbing against Jewish students or attacks on Israelis throughout Germany are carried out according to the same choreography. But they do not help us. No potential attacker will be deterred if the "solidarity with Jews" is summoned again. And well-intentioned but unfortunate remarks describing Halle's killings as "an alarm signal" reinforce the impression that politics and security agencies still have not realized the seriousness of the situation.
To be clear: it is enough! With the "Never again!" - Sunday speeches must finally be over. We Jews can no longer hear these phrases of "dismay," "zero tolerance for hatred," and "attacking civil society." They sound like mockery in our ears. Security agencies and politics should finally do their job and protect the Jewish community from anti-Semites - be it from the right, left or from the Islamist spectrum.
The Israeli TV channel KAN released a video of Anastassia and the other worshipers on the day of the attack. The video was strange to many viewers. After the police escorted her to the hotel, her mood was hilarious, almost happy. The prayer people sang loudly in Hebrew. "We celebrated," says Anastassia. "Life, our survival, the Jewish people, the wonder of Yom Kippur."
Miracles seldom happen a second time. Unfortunately, murder and menace already.
The SPIEGEL tries to portray different perspectives on the attack in Halle. Read a post by the journalist Max Czollek, who argues that Germany needs an anti-fascist consensus.