The toxic reality of anti-Semitism in Europe

Antisemitism in Europe has become mainstream and normalized at a level “not seen since the Second World War.” So says the president of the European Jewish Congress, Dr. Moshe Kantor, who states: “There has been an increase in open, unashamed and explicit hatred directed against Jews.”

It’s as if a veil lowered after the Holocaust has now been lifted to reveal that little has changed. Poland is seeking to deny its own history of antisemitism, with a new law criminalizing anyone who accuses Poland of having been complicit in the Nazi destruction of European Jewry.

This is of particular interest to me because my first novel, The Legacy, which was published this week happens to deal with antisemitism in wartime Poland as well as in present-day Britain.

Those who deny their antisemitism are doomed to repeat it. So it is in Poland.

Antisemitic outbursts there in the media and among politicians have significantly increased since the law’s passage last February, with wild claims of Jewish conspiracies and comparisons of Jews to animals.