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Why Antisemitism Keeps Returning to Europe | Munaeem.org
I live in Karachi, a city where traces of a vanished Jewish community still survive if you know where to look. Most Karachi residents pass through the city without thinking about the Jews who once lived here, traded here and prayed here. Their organised community largely disappeared decades ago.
Europe presents a very different history. Its Jewish communities did not simply vanish from public memory after the Holocaust. Europe built museums, memorials and laws around that catastrophe. German schoolchildren learn about Nazism. Auschwitz became one of the world’s most recognisable symbols of industrialised mass murder.
Yet antisemitism survived. That is the puzzle that interests me.
The usual explanation says Europe keeps forgetting its history. I think the history points towards something more complicated. Antisemitism has endured partly because it has proved remarkably adaptable. The accusation changes. The political vocabulary changes. The technology changes too. The target remains Jewish.
