Germany - Merkel attacks "middle-class anti-Semitism"

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany must tackle disguised "middle-class anti-Semitism" and attacked those who were silent about the country's painful past.

Speaking ahead of a memorial day for victims of the Nazi era nearly 75 years after Adolf Hitler's party came to power, Merkel said that while anti-Semitism was often linked to poorer communities, the middle-class was also to blame.

"I see, in the educated classes, a more disguised form of anti-Semitism, that is not so readily defined," Merkel told a conference, describing it as "a form of middle-class anti-Semitism".

"There is, in broad parts of the population, an awful silence when faced with all the historical images, with our own history, and this silence is always a danger".

The number of victims of far-right violence in Germany jumped by more than 25 percent in the first nine months of 2007 and violent anti-Semitic crime was also up according to Interior Ministry data.

Source: http://in.reuters.com

Date: Jan 25, 2008

By Sylvia Westall

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