The cover of the pro-government, Hungarian business magazine Figyelő featuring the head of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities was anything but subtle, playing on the insidious conspiracy trope about “Jewish” financiers. András Heisler was pictured with 20,000 forint banknotes floating all around him.
Almost as worrisome is the reaction of Jews in Budapest. When the issue came out last December, the federation condemned yet another display of blatant anti-Semitism, describing the cover as “incitement,” saying it “revives centuries-old stereotypes against our community.”
But since then, most of the reaction has been muted prominently, as I found during a visit to the Hungarian capital. Jews in the capital didn’t want to go on the record to denounce the pro-government magazine. In fact, forget denouncing it; few wanted even to discuss it.
I wonder if this was how it was for my Jewish ancestors in Poland and Ukraine during the last century? Did they think it was best to keep quiet, say nothing, remain as invisible as possible, and hope the storm would pass?
The old hate is spewing again. And it sometimes comes out unexpectedly. While I was in line the other day to buy a train ticket in the Austrian city of Graz, an impatient man in front of me suddenly let loose to register his frustration at the wait. And who did he decide to blame?
“Austria and America are the servants of Israel,” he shouted. “They do exactly what Israel tells them to do! They’ve killed hundreds of millions just because 6 million Jews were killed!”
The alarming resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, from attacks on Jewish buildings and cemetery vandalism to social media taunting and bullying of Jewish lawmakers, journalists, and business people, is coming not just from the populist Right but the populist Left, too.
“Who would have thought we would go back to situations that my parents experienced?” a middle-aged Hungarian Jew lamented. “I didn’t think it would return,” he sorrowfully added.
Sorrow combined with fear is not an unusual mixture of feelings these days for Europe’s Jewish communities.
In December, a European Union study found hundreds of Jews in a dozen member states reported getting physically or verbally abused in 2018. Over a third of 16,000 Jews polled say they avoid attending Jewish events out of fear of a possible attack.
Many Jews say even more alarming for them is that anti-Semitic prejudice and abuse has spread from the far-right fringe, where it has generally been confined since 1945, to left-wing populists. Some analysts fear that as ordinary people are exposed to more openly expressed anti-Semitism, they too will start adopting similar intolerance.
In the wake of recent cemetery desecration and yellow vest protesters baiting a prominent Jewish intellectual, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to fight anti-Semitism, saying it is “the antithesis of Europe.”
But as reports mount from Britain to Poland of the resurfacing of the ancient hatred, many of Europe’s Jews are asking whether it is the antithesis, or is it something so deeply ingrained in the warp and woof of a continent that it can never be unpicked?
Many Jews in France, home to Western Europe’s largest Jewish community, numbering more than half a million, are drawing the conclusion that it can’t be and are selling up. Thousands have left for Israel in recent years. More than a third of Jewish respondents to a survey by the EU say they’ve considered fleeing the continent, home to an estimated 2.4 million Jews.
So why has Europe’s old pathology of Jew-hatred resurfaced now? Some argue it is part of the overall “climate of hate,” with Jews being just one of several minorities subjected to abuse.
But with the Holocaust weighing grimly on Europe’s recent past, that explanation strikes me as inadequate, especially considering the efforts undertaken by authorities since to dispel persistent blood libels and poisonous myths.
Jamie Dettmer is an international correspondent and broadcaster for VOA.
