Jewish & World News

German authorities say they are tightening security measures after discovering a neo-Nazi network inside the country's prisons. The network, which was used to try and organize financial help for far-right convicts and their relatives, was discovered in the state of Hesse after evidence was uncovered during a search of prison cells.

A German regional court in the state of Bavaria covering the cities of Nürnberg-Fürth ruled on Friday that a pastor will continue to be able to describe a film about the Israel-Palestinian conflict as anti-Semitic. The pastor argued the film contributes to strengthening the neo-Nazi scene and anti-Semitism in the federal republic, according to a report in the local Nordbayern newspaper.

Israeli-born Jewish author Tuvia Tenebom is under investigation in Germany for raising his arm in the Hitler salute. Tenenbom told JTA that he had made the gesture toward a group of 900 neo-Nazis demonstrating in Magdeburg on Jan. 12 in order to make them feel they could talk to him. He was accompanied by a TV news camera team that is producing a report on how Tenenbom conducts interviews. The gesture is illegal in Germany.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center ranks Germany, Italy and the U.S. as the most successful at investigating and prosecuting Nazi war crimes over the past year. In its annual report covering April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012, released Thursday, the center said there was a fivefold increase in convictions from its previous report, from two to 10. Nine of those convictions were in Italy and one was in Germany.

The city of Berlin has imposed new legal conditions on parents who have their boys circumcised, as a former head of Germany's Jewish community blasted the national debate about the practice. Following a recent court ruling saying the rite amounted to grievous bodily harm, Berlin's top justice official, Thomas Heilmann, said the new policy was intended to protect the rights of Jewish and Muslim parents and their children.

Jewish school girls were verbally assaulted with anti-Semitic slurs in Berlin on Monday, in the second attack on Jews reported in the German capital in less than a week. Last week, Daniel Alter, a Berlin rabbi, was assaulted by youths in West Berlin in a suspected anti-Semitic attack, witnessed by his 6-year-old daughter.

The German capital is reacting to last week's attack on a rabbi with a show of solidarity with the local Jewish community. Under the headline 'Berlin is wearing a kippah' the Berliner Zeitung, one of the capital's most popular newspapers published a front page story featuring some of Berlin's most prominent resident's wearing yarmulkes on their heads.

Prosecutors in Germany's capital city dismissed a criminal complaint lodged against popular local Rabbi Yitshak Ehrenberg over "causing bodily harm" by performing ritual circumcision, according to a document obtained by The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. Senior representatives from the Simon Wiesenthal Center told the Post on Wednesday that Berlin is considering opposition to the enforcement of a Cologne court case outlawing circumcision.

On September 5, 1972 at 8:45 am the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem received an urgent cable from the Israeli Embassy in the German city of Bonn: The rumors, conflicting reports and general uncertainty had turned into an awful reality – a terrorist attack in Munich against the Israeli delegation to the Olympic Games. "According to a statement issued by the police, at 5 am this morning, a Palestinian group armed with machine guns attacked the Israeli Olympic delegation at the Olympic village in Munich," the historic cable read. "According to an initial report the Arabs who infiltrated the delegation's residence killed the Israeli coach and apparently injured others. The assailants are holding hostages and are demanding to release Arabs, probably (held) in Israel. The police have blocked the area and the police commander is conducting negotiations with the kidnappers. The reports are unclear; Consul Shamir is making his way to the village," it read.    ...

A 53-year-old Jewish man and his six-year-old daughter have become victims of an anti-Semitic attack in downtown Berlin which was reportedly committed by four youth of Arab origin. The man had to be brought to hospital with wounds at his head. 

The leaders of Germany’s Jewish community have criticized Interior Minister Eli Yishai and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger for their “unhelpful” involvement in the German circumcision controversy, saying their comments constitute counterproductive interference in the affairs of an independent Jewish Diaspora community. “The two both unnecessarily strained the debate and contributed to further uncertainty,” the heads of the Central Council of Jews in Germany wrote in a letter to Israel’s ambassador in Berlin, Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, the German-Jewish weekly Juedische Allgemeine reported on Monday.

Jews in Germany will be able to continue to perform circumcisions, an aide to German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a letter on Sunday, despite a court ruling deeming the practice illegal. In June, a district court in Cologne deemed ritual circumcisions illegal, saying they constituted physical harm against newborn babies and is defined as "irreversible damage against the body."

More than 900 police officers raided homes and clubhouses of suspected neo-Nazis in a crackdown in a western German state on Thursday, seizing far-right propaganda material, computer hard drives and a wide variety of weapons, the region’s top security official said. The raids to collect evidence came after North Rhine-Westphalia state interior minister Ralf Jaeger banned three local neo-Nazi groups.

For the first time, criminal charges have been pressed against a German rabbi for performing circumcisions, a Jewish weekly reported on Tuesday. A doctor from Hesse filed a criminal complaint against Rabbi David Goldberg, who serves in the community of Hof, in Upper Franconia (northern Bavaria), according to the Juedische Allgemeine weekly newspaper. The chief prosecutor of Hof confirmed that charges had been filed against the rabbi. The charges are based on the controversial decision of a Cologne district court, which ruled in June that circumcisions for religious reasons constitute illegal bodily harm to newborn babies.

Neo-Nazis planning to march through the town of Bad Nenndorf had to set off on foot earlier than expected, after demonstrators blocked their train – and at least one driver of the replacement bus service refused to take them. Around 700 people from the area gathered to show their opposition to the march, while more than 200 left-wing activists chained themselves to the station platform, delaying the arrival of the neo-Nazis’ train by more than an hour.

A German Olympic rower who left the London games prematurely has denied claims her boyfriend is a neo-Nazi and insisted she will continue in the sport. The allegation last week prompted Nadja Drygalla (23) to depart the Olympic village on Friday having already completed her participation in the games.

German rower Nadja Drygalla left the Olympic village on Friday following reports that her boyfriend was a far-right extremist. The German Olympic Committee said Drygalla, who had already finished competing at the Games as part of the women's rowing eight team, left of her own accord after a 90-minute conversation German officials. "Miss Drygalla confirmed credibly her commitment to the Olympic Charter," the head of Germany's committee Michael Vesper said. "She is leaving the Olympic Village so as not to be a burden for the team."

Austria's Jewish community (IKG) said recently it was working jointly with its German and Swiss counterparts to keep religious circumcision legal, after repeated calls for an end to the practice. The IKG was organizing an international coordinating group with the Jewish communities in neighboring Germany and Switzerland, IKG president Oskar Deutsch told the Austria Press Agency on Monday.

Two Jews and a Muslim in Germany have started a pro-circumcision campaign to counter a Cologne district court ruling that bans the practice. Called “together against snipping off our rights,” the petition already has 300 signatures, according to The Local, a German publication. Its organizers -- Mike Delberg, Michael Groys and Anil Celik -- plan to send it to the German government when it reaches 1,000 signatures.

Reuters reported on Monday that doctors in Austria's westernmost province have been cleared to resume circumcisions, after the Justice Ministry reassured them that they can perform the religious practice without risking criminal charges. The decision comes after last week, the governor of Voralberg province in Austria instructed hospitals to halt non-medical circumcisions until the "legal situation is clarified" in his country.