A floral tribute at the vandalized Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Photo: Reuters/Fabian Sommer

Antisemitic incidents in Berlin during the first half of this year remain at the worryingly high levels of the previous two years, according to statistics released on Tuesday by the German capital’s top official combating antisemitism.

During the first six months of 2023, a total of 304 antisemitic incidents were reported, compared with 328 at the same point last year and 319 in 2021. The numbers show that about one third of all antisemitic outrages in Germany, where 960 incidents were registered in the first half of 2023, occur in Berlin.

Florian Hengst, the antisemitism officer for the state of Berlin — one of the 16 states that compose Germany’s federal republic — told the German news agency dpa that the figures were only a “preliminary assessment” at this point.

Hengst said that the main concentration of the crimes was in hate speech, with antisemitic insults and denial of the Nazi Holocaust being common themes. He noted that much of the abuse took place on the internet, providing offenders with greater opportunity to mask their identities. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which unleashed a wave of conspiracy theories and comparisons of public health measures with Nazi persecution of Jews among the German public, was still being felt, Hengst added.

The latest figures come amid extensive media coverage of three recent antisemitic outrages in Berlin, two of which involved violence and the third arson.

Earlier this month, a 19-year-old Israeli tourist walking in the Kreuzberg neighborhood with his 18-year-old girlfriend was beaten up by three Arabic-speaking men who reportedly overheard him speaking in Hebrew on his cellphone. Then last Saturday, a 37-year-old Jewish man who arrived at a subway station with his son was punched and subjected to antisemitic insults by an assailant who was later apprehended by police.

Separately, a memorial to the thousands of Jews deported from Gleis 17 (“Platform 17”) at Berlin’s Grunewald station to Nazi concentration camps was set alight last week. Police subsequently arrested a 63-year-old man who is being investigated for similar offenses in the same period, including an arson attack upon the memorial to LGBT victims of the Nazis in Berlin’s Tiergarten park.

Despite the profusion of antisemitic outrages in a country that is home to a Jewish community of approximately 120,000, some officials believe that the true number is much higher, with many victims reluctant to report their ordeals to the authorities.

Last year, Thomas Haldenwang — the president of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV)  — warned that the officially recorded data for antisemitic crimes was merely “the tip of the iceberg.” Speaking to The Algemeiner in June, Felix Klein — the leading federal official combating antisemitism — observed that “only 20 percent of the antisemitic crimes are reported, so the real number should be five times what we have — 25 incidents per day.”

Hengst said that moves were underway to improve the sensitivity of police officers to antisemitic crimes as well as the speediness of their response, with new training programs being designed.