(CN) — In Berlin, petrol bombs were thrown at a synagogue.
In England, Jews report being frequently cursed at and threatened.
And in Paris, Jewish homes and businesses have been targeted with stenciled blue Stars of David — a chilling reminder of Nazi attacks on Jews in the lead-up to the Holocaust.
Across Europe, an alarming surge of antisemitism has erupted in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, and the subsequent outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas.
On weekends, massive protests in European cities have exposed deep anger towards Israel and Jewish people. This explosion of antisemitism is raising fears of violence and prompting police across Europe to step up security measures to protect Jewish communities.
“When the conflict in Israel and Palestine intensifies, there is always a spike in antisemitic incidents in Western Europe,” Ben Gidley, an expert on antisemitism at Birkbeck, University of London, said in a telephone interview.
On Tuesday, Paris prosecutors opened an investigation into who daubed dozens of Stars of David on buildings in districts where Jews live and work. The markings were viewed as a threat to Jews and echoed anti-Jewish acts carried out by Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Stars of David first appeared over the weekend in Parisian suburbs. More showed up on several buildings by Tuesday morning in a southern district of Paris.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne condemned “the despicable acts” and said the perpetrators will not go unpunished.
“This act of marking recalls the processes of the 1930s and the Second World War which led to the extermination of millions of Jews,” Samuel Lejoyeux, the president of the Union of Jewish Students of France, told AFP. “The people who did this clearly wanted to terrify.”
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, several European countries have reported a dramatic uptick in antisemitic incidents.
In the United Kingdom, the Community Security Trust, a charity that receives reports of antisemitism, said on Tuesday it had recorded at least 893 antisemitic incidents since Oct. 7, by far the most ever over a 25-day period since the group began its work in 1984.
“These are all instances of anti-Jewish racism, wherein offenders are targeting Jewish people, communities and institutions for their Jewishness,” the group said. “In many cases, these hateful comments, threats to life and physical attacks are laced with the language and symbols of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel politics.”
The group said the surge of anti-Jewish incidents is “unprecedentedly high” compared to previous periods of conflict in Israel.
For example, during a month-long period of escalating violence in May 2021, the charity recorded 691 antisemitic incidents. During a seven-week war between Israel and Hamas in the summer of 2014, it recorded 319 incidents over the first 25 days of that conflict.
In France, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said Tuesday that authorities had recorded 857 antisemitic incidents since the Hamas attack.
“That's as many acts of antisemitism in three weeks as there have been so far this year,” he said.
“We will protect you, absolutely, completely, day and night,” Darmanin promised Jewish communities.
On Monday, a bomb threat led to the evacuation of numerous Jewish schools in Paris and its suburbs. The country is on high alert after a teacher was stabbed to death on Oct. 13 by an alleged Muslim extremist. On Tuesday, Paris police also shot a woman wearing a Muslim scarf after she made threats to blow herself up at a train station.
France is home to about a half-million Jews, making it Europe's largest Jewish population and the third-largest in the world after Israel and the United States. The country is also home to Europe's largest Muslim population, estimated to be between three and six million.
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