“We are declaring war on every form of old and new antisemitism in Germany,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz said during a highly emotive speech commemorating the reopening of a Munich synagogue.
Merz spoke “on behalf of the entire Federal Government of the Federal Republic of Germany,” adding that he will work to combat all antisemitism, whether through political or legal means, using “every legislative measure that is possible for us and that is necessary.”
“We will not tolerate antisemitism even when it is disguised under the pretense of freedom, of art, of culture, or of science,” he told the audience on Monday.
The Reichenbach Synagogue on Reichenbachstrasse was opened in 1931 but was severely damaged by the Nazis in 1938. Holocaust survivors provisionally repaired the synagogue – the sole surviving one in Munich – after the war, and it was reopened in 1947.
The synagogue was at the epicenter of Jewish religious life in Munich until another synagogue, the Ohel Jakob Synagogue on St.-Jakobs-Platz, was opened on November 9, 2006, and since then, the Reichenbach Synagogue has been out of operation and left empty and decaying.
New wave of antisemitism since October 7
“Since October 7, we have been experiencing, you have been experiencing, a new wave of antisemitism, in both old and new forms, sometimes blatant and sometimes thinly veiled, in words and in deeds, on social media, at universities, in public spaces.
“I want to tell you how deeply this shames me as chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, but also as a German, as a child of the post-war generation, a child who grew up with ‘never again’ as a mandate, a duty, a promise.”
Merz’s voice cracked as he became overcome with emotion, speaking of the synagogue’s history and the “crime against humanity” that was the Holocaust.
“An act so monstrous, so radically evil, that it – to use the words of the great German-Jewish thinker Hannah Arendt – simply should never have been allowed to happen among us humans.”
After the ceremony, Merz tweeted: “We owe our Jewish fellow citizens the promise to breathe life into ‘Never Again’ as our collective historical duty.”
“I hope that the reopened Reichenbachstrasse Synagogue in Munich becomes a place of home for Jewish life.”
Around 450 people attended the ceremony, including Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, President of the State Parliament Ilse Aigner, Mayor of Munich Dieter Reiter, and President of the IKG Charlotte Knobloch.
“One of the most beautiful synagogues of modern times has been saved,” said Salamander. “I have been given the honor of my life to keep a house of God alive.”