Antisemitism in East Germany

East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a Soviet communist puppet state that existed from 1949 to 1990. There were a few hundred Jews in East Germany, mostly Holocaust survivors who had lived in pre-war eastern Germany or had been Marxist before the 1933 Nazi takeover. 

## Overview
Between the 1950s and 1980s, Jews in East Germany were persecuted for following Judaism or being seen as agents of Zionism over their Jewishness. 

Just as in the Soviet Union, the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism in East Germany was virtually non-existent. who were accused by the Czechoslovak communist leaders of being "Zionists" over their Jewish origin.

#### Holocaust denial
The East German communist regime refused to take responsibility for the Nazi genocide of Jews and supported the antisemitic Arab states that repeatedly invaded Israel. East German military advisers were active in Libya, Syria and South Yemen,

When West Germany made an agreement with Israel to pay Holocaust survivors reparations, the East German ruling party newspaper *Neues Deutschland* published the article *Reparations - For Whom?* in which the agreement was dismissed as "a deal between powerful West German and Israeli capitalists" – the antisemitic trope of Jews being "capitalists" was invoked.

East German official history emphasized communist resistance rather than Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. The fact that Nazism is fundamentally antisemitic was rarely mentioned, with the Jewish victims generalized as "inmates from all European countries" or misclassified as "the resistance". until 1988,

#### Anti-cosmopolitan campaign
Following its Soviet overlord's anti-cosmopolitan campaign, the East German communist regime harassed, detained, and interrogated several Jews on charges of "cosmopolitanism" and "spying for the West", 

In 1972, the East German communist regime labelled Zionism a "reactionary-nationalist ideology of the Jewish big bourgeoisie", which invoked the antisemitic trope of Jews being "capitalists". On September 18, 1973, Yosef Tekoah (1925–1991), Israel's ambassador to the UN General Assembly, said:

In 1975, the East German communist regime supported the now-withdrawn United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 that condemned Zionism as a form of racism.

### 1980s
Jewish cemeteries in East Germany were often vandalized, said that East German state propaganda was far more hostile to Jews than that of other communist countries. In his book *A History of the Jews in the Modern World*, American historian Howard Sachar stated that "anti-Zionism" in the Soviet Union and her puppet states was not much different from Nazism:

 (1893–1973), East Germany's leader from 1950 to 1971, who shaped East Germany's foreign policy.]]

### Obstruction of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice
In a 1991 interview with Jack Koehler, Simon Wiesenthal said that his efforts to track down Nazi war criminals hiding in East Germany were sabotaged by the antisemitic East German communist regime. Wiesenthal noted that East Germany was "the most antisemitic and anti-Israel in the entire Eastern Bloc", adding that:

## Related pages
* German Jews
* Secondary antisemitism
* Anti-Judaism and antisemitism

## References