Nikolas Lelle was unveiling his Antonio Amadeu Foundation’s latest antisemitism monitor on Tuesday, which found that Germany’s far-right were having some success in pushing a new narrative of history that sought to free Germany from the historical burden of being the country that murdered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, or Shoah.

Sociologist Beate Kuepper said 5.7% of the population showed antisemitic attitudes, three times the level of two years ago. While people with origins in Turkey or Russia were by far the most likely to have antisemitic beliefs, young people accounted for most of that increase, she added.

Germany has seen a wave of protests against Israel’s month-long bombardment of Gaza, which began after a raid by Hamas militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which 1,400 Israelis were killed and 240 hostages seized.

Much of Germany’s post-war foreign and cultural policy has been focussed on winning back an international respectability that was destroyed by Adolf Hitler’s Nazis, in part by seeking close ties with Israel and making gestures of atonement.

“The far-right is making cracks in our memorial culture,” Lelle told reporters, adding that progressive historians had also played a role with their argument that Germany could have the same relationship to Israel as other Western countries.

“In these debates, the role of Israel-related antisemitism was diminished,” he said. “They said it was fine to criticise Israel from the country of the Shoah.”

Attacks since Oct. 7 have included Stars of David being daubed on buildings, bottles filled with flaming petrol being thrown at synagogues and Jewish graves being desecrated.

“It pains me to say this just two days before the anniversary of Kristallnacht,” said Felix Klein government commissioner for tackling antisemitism, referring to a 1938 pogrom. “The poison of antisemitism still exists.”

Many of the participants in the pro-Palestinian protests saw themselves as progressives, Lelle noted on being asked about the presence of contingents from Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ rights groups.

“In many milieus that see themselves as progressive, anti-Israel positions are almost a matter of good taste,” Lelle said.

“With Hamas, I have today completely banned the activities of a terrorist organisation whose aim is to destroy the state of Israel,” Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

Samidoun’s German wing will also be disbanded, it added. Faeser said the international network works under the guise of a solidarity group for prisoners to spread anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda.

“If we are able to deport Hamas supporters, we must do this,” Nancy Faeser said following talks with officials at the Federal Criminal Police Office.

“Our security authorities have currently placed an even stronger focus on the Islamist scene,” she added, pointing to a recent attack in Brussels as an indication of the threat.

Concerns over antisemitism are growing in Germany, particularly following an attempted attack on a Berlin synagogue with petrol bombs, and clashes between pro-Palestinian protesters and police in Berlin and other cities.

At the same time members of Germany’s large Palestinian community have said their voices are being silenced by demonstration bans.

Faeser appealed to citizens to alert authorities of any “propaganda” supporting Hamas.

On Friday, prosecutors in Munich searched the house of a 38-year-old German national over an Instagram post defending Hamas’s attack, according to a statement from the prosecutor.

“We will not allow this vile hatred and horrific violence to spread,” Faeser told reporters.

Berlin has deployed some 140 soldiers on a corvette off the Lebanese coast and at the headquarters of the UNIFIL mission in southern Lebanon that was hit by a rocket on Sunday without causing casualties.

“On the corvette Oldenburg, (the minister) thanked the sailors for their efforts and was briefed on the impact the conflict in Israel and Gaza is having on German soldiers in the region,” the defence ministry in Berlin said on the social media platform X, formerly called Twitter.

UNIFIL has operated in Lebanon since 1978 to maintain peace along the border with Israel and was expanded by the U.N. resolution that halted the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war in southern Lebanon.

“The German government’s stance on arms exports to some countries is a real problem,” Faury told the business daily Handelsblatt.

“If Germany wants to be a trustworthy partner in major defence projects, it must resolve the issue of export controls with the other Europeans and not in spite of them,” he said.

Faury also told the newspaper that the European planemaker was on track to reach its delivery target this year.

“We have made a lot of progress with the supply chains. However, the environment remains extremely complex and requires a lot of work, attention and time,” he said.

Airbus missed its delivery target last year.

France and Germany have long been at odds on defence exports, with Berlin traditionally taking a more cautious stance.

Berlin halted arms sales to Saudi Arabia following the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has so far pushed back against pressure to unblock delivery of the Eurofighter jets to Saudi Arabia. His coalition partner, the Greens, firmly opposes the move, pointing to human rights concerns and Saudi Arabia’s role in the Yemen war.

“Chancellor Scholz renewed Germany’s full solidarity with the people of Israel in these difficult times and emphasized that Germany stands unwaveringly at Israel’s side,” the spokesperson added in a statement.

Earlier on Saturday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Berlin was discussing with the United Nations and other partners how to deploy humanitarian aid to Gaza via the Rafah crossing with Egypt, and Berlin is working with Egypt and Israel to find solutions for German citizens stranded there.

Baerbock, who arrived on Saturday morning in Cairo for discussion with her Turkish and Egyptian counterparts, said Israel’s fight against Hamas must be carried out with consideration for the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

“The fight against Hamas must be carried out with the greatest possible consideration for the humanitarian situation … This is a huge dilemma that is difficult to resolve,” she said.

The Saudi delegation, led by Vice Minister El-Khereiji, discussed various aspects of the important strategic relationship between Saudi Arabia and Germany with the visiting German officials. Areas of cooperation such as trade, investment, and cultural exchange were reviewed.

The German delegation was led by Director of Middle East and North Africa Ambassador Tobias Tunkel, and included Director for Export Control Ambassador Gudrun Lingner.

Both sides explored opportunities to enhance cooperation across various fields and took stock of regional and global issues of mutual interest. They highlighted the longstanding friendship between the two countries and emphasized the desire to take the partnership to new heights.

The meeting assumed significance as Saudi Arabia and Germany look to bolster ties in line with their strategic dialog and joint commitment to regional peace and prosperity. It also comes amid concerted efforts to diversify cooperation beyond energy to include sectors like technology, infrastructure and culture.

The high-level interaction underscored the warmth in Saudi-German relations and reaffirmed the commitment to deepen collaboration for mutual benefit. Further talks are expected to be scheduled on specific initiatives and projects.

Non-Germans in the German armed forces during World War II were volunteers, conscripts and those otherwise induced to join who served in Nazi Germany’s armed forces during World War II.

In German war-time propaganda those who volunteered for service were referred to as Freiwillige (“volunteers”). At the same time, many non-Germans in the German armed forces were conscripts or recruited from prisoner-of-war camps.

The term Freiwillige was used in Nazi propaganda to describe non-German Europeans (neither Reichsdeutsche nor Volksdeutsche) who volunteered to fight for the Third Reich during World War II. Though largely recruited from occupied countries, they also came from co-belligerent, neutral, and even active enemy nations. From April 1940 forward, Himmler began recruiting men for the Waffen-SS from among the West and Northern European people of Norway and the Low Countries.

In 1941, the SS-Viking Division composed of Flemish, Dutch, Danish, and Norwegian volunteers was formed and placed under German command. Shortly thereafter, Waffen-SS troops were added from Latvia, Estonia, and elsewhere.

When Red Army soldiers were captured by the invading German forces for instance, significant numbers of the POWs began immediately aiding the Wehrmacht. Along with the forces allied to the Nazis, the Russians comprised the “largest contingent of foreign auxiliary troops on the German side with upwards of one million men”.

Many of the foreign volunteers fought in either the Waffen-SS or the Wehrmacht. Generally the non-Germanic troops were permitted into the Wehrmacht whereas the Germanic volunteers were recruited into the service of the Waffen-SS as part of propaganda-driven “pan-Germanic army” of the future.

Besides helping the Germans fight foreign auxiliary units across occupied Europe enforced order in the occupied territories, oversaw forced labor, participated in Nazi security warfare, and assisted in the killing of the Jewish population during the Holocaust.

On the Eastern Front the volunteers and conscripts in the Ostlegionen comprised a fighting force equivalent of 30 German divisions by the end of 1943. By mid-1944 upwards of 600,000 troops of the Eastern Legions/Troops were assembled under the command of General Ernst-August Köstring, stemming mostly from the periphery of the Soviet empire; they consisted of non-Slavic Muslim minorities like the Turkestanis, the Volga Tatars, Northern Caucasians, and Azerbaijanis, as well as Georgians and Armenians.

The overall effectiveness of Nazi Germany’s military collaborators was described by one German commander as one-fifth good, one-fifth bad, and three-fifths inconsistent. Many of the foreign volunteers fought under the banner of the swastika from areas outside Europe and were motivated by a desire for the freedom of their nations against Soviet domination or British imperialism.

Placing the volunteers from Eastern Europe who fought alongside the Germans into context, German historian Rolf-Dieter Müller comments that people in countries from Finland to Romania, “suddenly found themselves caught between the ‘red’ hammer and the ‘brown’ anvil”, leaving them little in terms of options; their subsequent collective “shock over German ruthlessness was surpassed only by their dislike for and even hatred of the Soviet Union”.

The non-German troops thus comprised a wide range of ethnicities, ranging from the mainly Turkic peoples in the Ostlegionen to the Muslim Slavs in the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar and the Indians of the Indische Legion (the Indian National Army fought against the British on the Japanese side). For the majority of volunteers from Muslim communities, their animosity against the Soviets stemmed from their anti-Russian feelings, religious impulses (their disdain for Soviet atheism for example), coupled by the negative experience of Stalin’s policies on nationality, and by the corresponding disruption to their way of life.

Ultimately, the European collaborators remained subordinated to German oversight and were “kept on a short leash.”

Rolf-Dieter Müller puts the figures for the European Wehrmacht allies and volunteers who fought in the eastern campaign at approximately one-million men in total, which he claims gives substantial reason to “re-evaluate” the “military dimensions” of the overall collaboration.

In Müller’s estimation, the Wehrmacht would not have been capable of making it to Moscow in 1941 were it not for the Finnish, Hungarian, and Romanian conscripts, operations in the Volga and Caucasus in 1942 would have ground to a halt without the additional forces; and following the disaster at Stalingrad, it was foreign conscripts and volunteers (60,000 troops) fighting partisans in the Balkans which enabled the Germans to stabilize the Eastern Front in Finland and the Ukraine.

Müller also carefully reminds readers that on top of the co-opted aide of collaborators, millions of foreign laborers were forced to help provide the Nazis with the needed material resources to carry on the war far longer than otherwise possible without their toils

Khaled Homoud Alshareef holds PhD in Business and he earned Masters in Philosophy. He often writes about Islamism, Islamist factions and modern Terrorism. He tweets under @0khalodi0.

Around 1,500 volunteers equipped with face masks, hand disinfectant and tracking gadgets attended an indoor concert in Germany on Saturday as part of a study to simulate how the novel coronavirus spreads in large gatherings.

As part of the so-called Restart19 study, researchers from the University Medical Center in Halle want to find out how cultural and sporting events can safely take place without posing a risk to the population.

Volunteers were handed protective facemasks of the type typically used in hospitals and bottles of flurorescent hand sanitizer at the concert of German singer-songwriter Tim Bendzko in an indoor arena in Leipzig.

“I am extremely satisfied with the discipline displayed by the participants,” Stefan Moritz, the head of the study, told a news conference after the concert. “I was surprised how disciplined everyone was in wearing masks.”

He said results of the study, which is being financed by the states of Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, were expected in 4-6 weeks.

The participants were also given contact tracers to help track the distance between concertgoers and to identify in which parts of the arena, such as entrance halls and grandstands, people might crowd too closely together.

Researchers asked participants to regularly disinfect their hands using the fluorescent sanitiser so scientists can identify – with the help of ultra-violet light – which surfaces are touched frequently and pose a risk for spreading the virus.

Sporting events such as Liverpool’s Champions League soccer match against Atletico Madrid and the Cheltenham Festival, a horseracing event, in Britain in March have been blamed for playing a role in spreading COVID-19.

Most events with big crowds have been put on hold.

A decision to grant approval for a concert of German singer Sarah Connor with 13,000 attendees on Sept. 4 in Duesseldorf has faced sharp criticism by virologists and local politicians.