(WSJ) Varadarajan–Troubling Times at the Jewish Museum Berlin

Mr. Kramer doesn’t shy away from pointing the finger at Germany’s newer demographic sources of antisemitism, even as he cites the latest official figures, which show right-wing extremism as the single largest identifiable source of antisemitic crime. In 2024, he says, 48.4% of antisemitic offenses were classified as right-wing, compared with 31.1% as fueled by “foreign ideology” and 11% by “religious ideology.” He stresses that “antisemitism linked to Islamist and anti-Israel milieus has risen sharply since Oct. 7 and is now a major part of the threat picture.”

And so, 25 years after it opened, Berlin’s Jewish Museum must face up to an existential challenge. It’s no longer enough to “explain Jewish culture to Germans from a Jewish perspective,” as Ms. Berg describes the institution’s founding mission. It must adapt to—and push back against—a spate of ugliness and violence in Germany that flows from sources old and new, from a resurgent right that many believe is nostalgic for a Nazi past and from an arriviste cohort of Islamist Jew-haters who teem in Germany’s cities.

“We cannot ever be complacent,” Ms. Berg says, as she navigates the barriers outside her buildings, each bollard proof of how hard it is for a German Jew to live in peace.

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Fun Fact: Daniel Libeskind, who designed the Jewish Museum Berlin, and the National Holocaust Momument in Ottawa, is the uncle of Canada's NDP leader, @avilewis. https://t.co/edrdD9AwDz

— Phil Pothen 🇨🇦 he/him (@pothen) September 9, 2026