Toby Axelrod
A Stolperstein commemorating Nazi victim Paul Gröger is embedded in the sidewalk in front of City Hall. (Robert Michael/picture alliance via Getty Images)
September 27, 2026, 10:29 pm
German city bans stumbling stone memorials to Nazi victims
It’s a “transparent maneuver” by the AfD to suppress Germany’s remembrance culture, says Jewish leader and Holocaust survivor.
By Toby Axelrod
Elif Eralp (C), lead candidate of the leftist Die Linke, and supporters of the leftist Die Linke react to preliminary election results following the closure of polling stations in Berlin state elections on September 20, 2026 in Berlin, Germany. (Nadja Wohlleben/Getty Images)
September 24, 2026, 8:22 am
Merz warns that Jews are not safe in Germany, as voters choose parties linked to antisemitism
Far-left Die Linke party wins Berlin municipal elections, far-right AfD support grows.
By Toby Axelrod
Rabbi Gesa Ederberg is installed as the president of the Rabbinical Assembly at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey, March 11, 2026. (Courtesy RA)
March 19, 2026, 8:35 am
Berlin rabbi makes history as first European to head Conservative rabbis’ association
Rabbi Gesa Ederberg is also likely the first convert to Judaism to hold the role.
By Toby Axelrod
A photograph of an antisemitic sign on a shop window in Flensburg, Germany, went viral in September 2025. (Screenshot from social media)
September 19, 2025, 2:43 pm
‘Jews are banned from entering here!’ sign in German shop window spurs international backlash
The shop owner in Flensburg, Germany, said he was trying to protest the Gaza war.
By Toby Axelrod
Right-wing extremist Horst Mahler and his lawyer attend the trial against Mahler at the country court on Jan. 12, 2009 in Munich. (Miguel Villagran/Getty Images)
July 28, 2025, 3:45 pm
Horst Mahler, one of Germany’s most prominent neo-Nazis, is dead at 89
Mahler came to his right-wing antisemitism and Holocaust denial after beginning as a left-wing activist who represented a Nazi hunter.
By Toby Axelrod
The Stolpersteine, or Stumbling Block, placed outside Anna Donat’s Berlin home shows when she was deported to Auschwitz. (Courtesy Stolpersteine)
December 31, 2024, 10:41 am
German woman who lives in home looted from Jews must give it up, judge rules
The decision comes after a decade of legal wrangling over a restitution claim that is likely to be the last of its kind.
By Toby Axelrod
The London Jewish Chronicle on sale outside Westminster Cathedral, Jan. 23, 1966. (Jewish Chronicle/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
September 16, 2024, 12:39 pm
Columnists resign from London Jewish Chronicle amid allegations that Gaza news was fabricated
“With the heaviest of hearts, I need to break my connection,” wrote one longtime columnist.
By Toby Axelrod
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
Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry visit Auschwitz in "Treasure," a 2024 tragicomedy set in the 1990s. (Bleecker Street)
June 16, 2024, 10:39 am
Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry take a father-daughter trip to Auschwitz in tragicomedy ‘Treasure’
The film tells the story of New York journalist Ruth Rothwax and her Holocaust survivor father as they visit the city of his birth — Łódź — and the concentration camp he survived.
By Toby Axelrod
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
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
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
Load More