Germany
Police officers secure the area around the Koenigsplatz square after a shooting near the building of the Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism and the Israeli consulate in Munich, southern Germany, on Sept. 5, 2024. (Photo by Pauline Curtet/AFP via Getty Images, via JNS)
September 5, 2024, 8:04 am
Gunman opens fire near Israeli consulate in Munich
German security forces shot and killed the suspect during an exchange of fire.
By Charles Bybelezer
Irmgard Furchner, a former secretary for the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp, arrives with her lawyers during her trial in Itzehoe, Germany, Dec. 6, 2022. German courts require the face of defendants to be obscured in photographs. (Marcus Brandt/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
August 20, 2024, 5:03 pm
Germany court upholds conviction of 99-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary
There remain three more cases of accused accomplices to Nazi war crimes pending.
By Toby Axelrod
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. (Photo by Adam Reinherz)
August 12, 2024, 5:38 pm
Germany Close Up prompts questions about country’s past and future
Seminar takes young North American Jewish leaders to Germany to ask and teach
By Adam Reinherz
Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer, June 12, 2012. (Credit: Scott-Hendryk Dillan via Wikimedia Commons)
June 26, 2024, 7:01 pm
102-year-old Shoah survivor is the cover star of Vogue Germany
Margot Friedländer was the only member of her family to survive the camps.
By JNS
Lydia Barenholz and Ruth Melcer, who attended Munich's post-war Hebrew high school together, are shown with some of the objects they contributed to the new exhibit, "Munich Displaced. The Surviving Remnant." (Daniel Schvarcz)
July 14, 2023, 2:18 pm
Landmark exhibits shed light on life in displaced person camps after the Holocaust
The exhibition project is the first to focus on the lives of the people who fled, were displaced or deported during World War II and then found themselves in or near Munich.
By Toby Axelrod
​​Claims Conference delegation for negotiations with the German government on behalf of Holocaust survivors in Berlin, Germany, May 8, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Claims Conference)
June 15, 2023, 12:59 pm
Germany agrees to $1.4 billion in annual Holocaust reparations as survivors age
The record figure reflected a recognition that, even as the number of survivors dwindles with each passing year, their needs are increasing as they age.
By Asaf Elia-Shalev
Roger Waters performs in Munich, May 21, 2023. (Angelika Warmuth/picture alliance via Getty Images)
May 25, 2023, 1:11 pm
Roger Waters uses Anne Frank’s name at German concerts, prompting calls for punishment from Jewish groups
He reportedly at times dons an SS uniform and symbolically shoots a machine gun into the crowd.
By Toby Axelrod
Former Nazi concentration camp guard Josef Schütz hides his face with a folder as he arrives to a makeshift courtroom in Brandenburg-Havel to hear the verdict in his trial, June 28, 2022. (Adam Berry/AFP via Getty Images)
April 27, 2023, 5:49 pm
German man who was oldest-ever person tried for Nazi crimes has died at 102
He died while waiting for an appeal after being sentenced to five years in prison.
By Jackie Hajdenberg
Deborah Lipstadt and Felix Klein visit the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe during a meeting of special envoys and coordinators to combat antisemitism in Berlin, Jan. 30, 2023. (Wolfgang Kumm/picture alliance via Getty Images)
February 9, 2023, 4:01 pm
‘We have to be here fighting’: Deborah Lipstadt on her Poland-Germany trip with Douglas Emhoff
"Some people say this is just like the 1930s. It is not."
By Toby Axelrod
This "Statuette of Maria Lactans" was returned to the heirs of its pre-war Jewish owner, Jakob Goldschmidt. (National Museums in Berlin, Sculpture Collection and Museum of Byzantine Art / Marion Böhl Public Domain Mark 1.0)
February 1, 2023, 11:39 am
Germany returns 16th-century sculpture to heirs of Jewish owner
The “Maria Lactans” statuette will be given back to the family of German Jewish banker and entrepreneur Jakob Goldschmidt, who fled Nazi Germany soon after Hitler came to power.
By Toby Axelrod
Rabbi Walter Homolka, rector of the Abraham Geiger College, in the Liberal Jewish community's synagogue in Hanover, Germany in December 2016. (Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images)
January 14, 2023, 9:15 pm
In a twist, German rabbi at scandal’s center cedes rabbinical school ownership to Berlin Jews
Surprise development is controversial.
By Toby Axelrod
Rabbi Walter Homolka, rector of the Abraham Geiger College, in the Liberal Jewish community's synagogue in Hanover, Germany in December 2016. (Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images)
December 9, 2022, 9:21 am
Prominent German rabbi exits leadership roles as allegations against him confirmed
The scandal has shaken the foundations of modern liberal Judaism in Germany, and the report suggests that those foundations were weak because they rested largely on one individual.
By Toby Axelrod
Felix Klein, Federal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany, speaks during a press conference in Berlin, Nov. 8, 2022. (Christian Marquardt/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
December 7, 2022, 3:28 pm
Germany approves first-ever government plan to combat antisemitism
Far-right extremists have been involved in multiple terror attacks, including on a synagogue in Halle in 2019.
By Toby Axelrod
The granary that was built in the 15th century on top of the medieval Jewish cemetery of Erfurt. (Photo by Shai Carmi/Hebrew University via The Times of Israel)
November 30, 2022, 2:36 pm
Largest study of ancient DNA shows medieval Ashkenazi Jewry was surprisingly diverse
Scientists find that some 700 years ago, the Jews of Erfurt, Germany, formed 2 groups; rabbinic consultants stipulated that they study only loose teeth from pre-excavated skeletons
By Amanda Borschel-Dan
Clint Smith is the author of December’s cover story in the Atlantic, “Monuments to the Unthinkable,” exploring how Germany — and by extension, the United States — accounts for the crimes of its past. (Courtesy the Atlantic)
November 28, 2022, 2:26 pm
A Black writer explores how Germany remembers its ‘unthinkable’ past
Wrestling with how America accounts for its past crimes, he went to learn from the Germans, who “are still trying to figure out how to tell the story of what their country did..”
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
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