History and the Manchester synagogue attack

Reflections on a dark day in Britain

Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue, Manchester. Img: David Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0

It was German Unity Day this week, and I had intended to pen a piece about it for this blog. I had just begun to write when news broke of a car ramming and stabbing attack outside a synagogue in Manchester that left two people dead and three more injured in serious condition. That stopped me in my tracks, and I wanted to offer a few reflections here.

As a non-Jewish person, I won’t assume to know what news of the horrific attack felt like to Jewish communities in the UK. As a historian of German history, however, I can honestly say that the incident shocked me to the core.

I think the rising levels of alarm within Jewish communities across Europe have largely bypassed non-Jewish majorities. In the UK, there are only around 300,000 Jews, less than 0.5% of the population, with the majority living in London and Manchester. In Germany, the proportions are even smaller. An estimated 225,000 Jews reside in the country, many of whom originate from communities that have arrived relatively recently from the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Israel.

Those figures mean that most non-Jewish people don’t have any contact with Jewish communities. I remember growing up in Germany and learning about the Nazis at school, finding the rising antisemitism in the 1930s incredibly difficult to understand or conceptualise because I found the idea of targeting a tiny, mostly highly assimilated and therefore invisible minority absurd. I think many non-Jewish Europeans still feel like that today. Antisemitism is an abstract concept if you’ve never witnessed, let alone experienced it.

Many people would be shocked to learn just how nasty and frequent antisemitic attacks have become in Western countries. When you walk into Jewish institutions in London, most have serious security in place. Complex door systems, lockdown drills and non-public addresses are standard precautions.

Events featuring Jewish speakers or themes typically don’t advertise in advance for fear of becoming a target. Even the recent production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice needed heavy security. This is not a new phenomenon, but somehow, we have become accustomed to it as a society. An entire community lives much of its public life under siege, and yet this is somehow not considered an outrage.

Many antisemitic attacks happen under the threshold of criminality and therefore don’t even find their way into the statistics. And I mean antisemitic, by the way. There is often no link to Israel or the conflict in Gaza. Jewish individuals come under attack for being Jewish. I know from experience that discussing Jewish subject matters or inviting speakers who happen to be Jewish is enough to raise the ire of antisemites.

To give a relatively common example: A few years ago, I watched Tom Stoppard’s play, Leopoldstadt, about the Jewish community in Vienna during the first half of the 20th century. In front of me sat a mother and her teenage son. It was obvious from the latter’s body language that he had clearly been dragged to this and didn’t want to be there. He became increasingly agitated as the play progressed. When the final curtain fell, he stood up and said to his mother: “I hope you know that I hated every minute of this Jewish propaganda.” There was more angry ranting about “zionism” and “Jewish narratives” on the way out. I remember being disturbed, but when I discussed this with Jewish acquaintances in London, they just shrugged and said this was par for the course.

When working with Jewish colleagues in London, I have long been struck by the way they react to the constant hostility with a mix of resignation, pragmatism and dark humour. I’ve heard them recite the old Jewish joke: “They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat!” I’ve seen them wave off the indignation of non-Jewish friends when witnessing insults in public settings. However, I’ve also noticed a growing alarm and caution in the community in recent years, along with mounting frustration that society doesn’t take the rising threat levels as seriously as it should.

As a German historian, it’s this aspect in particular that reminds me of even darker times. In the 1930s, many non-Jewish Germans lived alongside Jewish neighbours and colleagues. But few realised or wanted to realise how dangerous the situation was becoming for them. They looked the other way during anti-Jewish boycotts. Children accepted that teachers picked on the one Jewish kid in the class. There was no public outrage at the racist Nuremberg Laws.

Of course, the situation was different in that it was the state rather than terrorists committing acts of antisemitic violence, but the social dynamics aren’t dissimilar. There is strong evidence to suggest that many Germans were deeply shocked by the state-instigated November pogrom in 1938, also known by the Nazi euphemism of Kristallnacht, yet the vast majority did nothing.

Instead, many Christians felt a vague sense of indignation about the collective idea that Jews had “overdone it” in terms of their economic and cultural influence in Germany. There was a notion that they were all in it together and had stacked the cards against the supposedly weaker, non-Jewish community. The state violence went a bit far in the eyes of many non-Jewish Germans, but few did anything about it. Step by step, the majority got used to the worsening conditions for the Jewish minority in their midst. Opinions hovered somewhere between indifference and a sense that Jews deserved their fate.

The other thing that reminds me painfully of my studies of those times is the way many British Jews are making plans to potentially leave the country. There was a significant surge in this when the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister crystallised, and then another one after 7 October 2023. This week, the author and journalist Ashley Rindsberg went viral with a post in which he outlined a conversation he had just before the terrorist incident on Thursday:

“This morning as I sat in a London synagogue for Yom Kippur services, a friend sitting next to me said ‘I reckon Jews have about 10 years left in this country.’ I said I disagreed, and that it’s not as bad as it seems. About 20 minutes later, the service was suddenly interrupted. A synagogue security official went up to the bimah and said there had been a ‘major incident’ in the north and they were locking down the synagogue. There was a buzz of fear. Children’s services were canceled. We were not to leave. My friend looked at me, and said, ‘You see what I mean. 10 years.’”

A survey published earlier this year found that half of British Jews have thought about leaving the country. I’ve heard people ponder it, the big questions being when and where to? This, too, is very reminiscent of options German and Austrian Jews contemplated in the 1930s. It takes a lot to leave one’s home and up sticks. Accordingly, Jewish communities are shockingly pragmatic about the tidal nature of waves of antisemitism throughout history, always wondering whether it’s better to sit things out or relocate.

When researching for my next book, Weimar, I found the tiny community of 100 Jews in the town had such conversations throughout the 1930s. Many families had long-established roots in the region, and no obvious place to go. So they stayed, believing Germans — people so fond of their culture and civility — would come to their senses sooner or later. Others thought, just like many British Jews do today, that the country they lived in is good at heart and would resist the extremists. Yet others left, if they could, most emigrating to the United States, many also to Britain and other countries.

The thing that could have made the difference then and certainly would do now is how the majority responds to rising tides of antisemitism. Where the Nazis sensed resistance, they proceeded with more caution – for instance, when it came to mixed marriages. But they kept pushing the boundaries and found ultimately that there was no significant obstacle or even objection to the radicalisation of their antisemitic policies.

Ordinary Germans looked on, and many even cheered as antisemitic legislation turned into violence and ultimately into mass murder. In the end, it didn’t matter to the majority what a Jewish individual was supposed to have done that was to the detriment of other communities. They were attacked for being Jewish, and society had allowed itself to harden its heart against such injustice.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that present-day Britain resembles 1930s Germany. Far from it. I think most Brits are genuinely appalled by the attack in Manchester. But the social dynamics still show some worrying similarities in the shoulder-shrugging indifference towards rising antisemitism and in the deliberate conflagration of this issue with other grievances.

I listened to a call-in radio show a couple of days after the attack, and some contributors quoted statistics on how many British Jews are supposedly sympathetic towards Israel — information clearly offered as mitigation for the attack, or “context” as one caller put it.

But this is precisely the point: The Manchester perpetrator, Jihad Al-Shamie, didn’t select his victims for supporting Israel’s policies and actions in the Middle East. He targeted them for being Jewish. That should shock and appal any decent member of society, but it’s obvious from many of the responses that it has left a significant minority cold.

In such dynamics – a mixture of misguided activism, group-targeted hatred and indifference – extremism flourishes unchecked. The synagogue attack in Manchester this week is a product of exactly this kind of atmosphere, and I worry about where it might lead. But I also fear that with society fraying at the edges, the sort of community cohesion it takes to stand up to extremism may be harder to come by than it used to be. It takes courage to put your head above the parapet, and it’s easier to stay silent or even tacitly support the rising tides of antisemitism. The danger is that they reach a tipping point and become mainstream.

Fundamentally, I believe a deeply rooted decency marks British society, and that this will once again inspire people to help shield and support the Jewish community. I hope I’m right. The deadly extremism we saw this week must never be tolerated.