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Home » Germany: kippas off, kippas on

Germany: kippas off, kippas on

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s been a brouhaha in Germany over the wearing of the skullcap by traditional Jews:

At the weekend, Felix Klein, the country’s commissioner on anti-Semitism sparked uproar when he said in an interview with the Funke regional press group that he could not “advise Jews to wear the kippa everywhere all the time in Germany.”

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin voiced shock at Klein’s warning and said it was a “capitulation to anti-Semitism” and evidence that Jews are unsafe in Germany.

Late Monday, Klein reversed course after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman intervened.

“The state must see to it that the free exercise of religion is possible for all… and that anyone can go anywhere in our country in full security wearing a kippa,” Steffen Seibert told a press conference.

How are they going to do that? Unless a cop or an entourage of cops follow every Jew around, I don’t see how it can be done. Let me add that, well over a decade ago, I was told by Orthodox Jews who visit Europe that they already were wearing innocuous secular caps over their kippas (in Hebrew, kippot) for safety’s sake. So it seems to me that Klein was actually voicing what a lot of kippa-wearing Jews had already been doing for quite some time.

More:

In his latest statement to Funke, Klein said: “I call on all citizens of Berlin and across Germany to wear the kippa next Saturday if there are new, intolerable attacks targeting Israel and Jews on the occasion of al-Quds day in Berlin.”

Al-Quds is an annual event against Israeli control of Jerusalem and will take place on Saturday.

Implicit in all of these remarks is that the majority of attacks on Jews are committed by Muslim residents of Germany rather than people of ethnic German descent, which is a strange irony (although a common one these days, I think).

Klein’s call for citizens to wear the kippa in solidarity with Jews reminded me of a story from World War II which turns out to have been apocryphal. You may recall it:

The legend of Denmark’s King Christian X and his wearing of the yellow star is our most stirring example of non-violent opposition to evil: ordinary citizens (following the example of a courageous leader) defy their military overlords by selflessly putting themselves in harm’s way to prevent the persecution of a defenseless minority. If only more people exhibited such moral fortitude nowadays, we reason, the world would be a much better place. Perhaps if more people had exhibited such moral courage back then, we think, the Holocaust might never have happened.

Although the Danes did undertake heroic efforts to shelter their Jews and help them escape from the Nazis, there is no real-life example of the actions described by this legend. Danish citizens never wore the yellow badge, nor did King Christian ever threaten to don it himself. In fact, Danish Jews never wore the yellow badge either (except for the few who were finally deported to concentration camps), nor did German officials ever issue an order requiring Danish Jews to display it.

Please read the whole thing.

The Danes actually did manage to rescue most of their Jews by ferrying them out to Sweden in 1943.

[NOTE: Please read my discussion of the differential treatment of different occupied countries by the Nazis, and how it made defiance less difficult in a country such as Denmark, which was allowed relative autonomy. This shouldn’t take anything away from the Danes, but it does explain a lot.]

Comments

Germany: kippas off, kippas on — 29 Comments

  1. Of clourse, the cops =could arrest anyone pestering a Jew with one on.

    Nah. that might offend some Muslims and then they would cut your head off.

    Or, like the young lady in Brussels, detonate your bomb vest and blow up everyone around you.

  2. “The legend of Denmark’s King Christian X and his wearing of the yellow star is our most stirring example of non-violent opposition to evil: ordinary citizens (following the example of a courageous leader) defy their military overlords by selflessly putting themselves in harm’s way to prevent the persecution of a defenseless minority…”

    I resent this, having spent 20 years in the armed forces.

    Like I want to be your overlord. It’s just way too much work. I would much rather be sitting at home watching the World Series.

  3. If I recall correctly, a white-bearded man harassed in Seattle was wearing a MAGA cap over a kippah.

  4. Two of my grandparents were sheltered in Denmark during World War 2 when the U.S. was unwilling to admit them.

  5. 1. The German states have suffered chronic fertility deficits for nearly 50 years.

    2. Over the years, they’ve welcomed guest workers into their country. With some qualified exceptions, this is bad policy.

    3. The guest workers were recruited from that part of the world whose denizens are least amenable to adopting the culture of the host country.

    4. They suffer a chronic inability to make access to common provision conditional or to enforce the penal code with vigor.

    5. They have indifferently structured common provisions and contrived sclerosis in their labor and housing markets.

    6. They’re Barney Fife. They just keep pumping bullets in their goddamn feet.

  6. Roland Hirsch, I’m proud of my country. That doesn’t mean I’m proud of every decision a particular President made.

    I’m not even proud of every decision I made, let alone a President who died decades before I was born.

    Back when I could walk on Memorial Day I’d place flags on the graves of veterans and I didn’t care if the tombstone had a Cross or a Star of David.

  8. I probably shouldn’t have kept playing rugby until my mid 40s. I now feel every hit I ever took.

  9. Embrace the power of punctuation.

    “Back when I could walk,” COMMA, I would place flags on the graves of the fallen.

    Not caring to know anything about them other than they wore the uniform.

  10. Herman Wouk, author of “Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” later made into acclaimed TV miniseries, died eleven days ago and I’m sad.

    The literary world could never embrace his work as proper literature with the exception of “The Caine Mutiny,” but Wouk worked for me. WoW and WaR were splendid, necessary novels, especially for their portrayal of the noose tightening gradually on European Jews and culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust.

    I believe Wouk will continue to be read, when the winners of the last 20 Pulitzers and Nobels are forgotten. God bless him.

  11. Hm. That’s not what Herr Klein said a couple of days ago, according to the BBC:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48411735

    The German government’s anti-Semitism commissioner has urged Jews to avoid wearing skullcaps in public.

    Felix Klein warned Jews against donning the kippa in parts of the country following a rise in anti-Semitism.

    He said his opinion on the matter had “changed compared with what it used to be”.

    I would recommend also the posting by Niall Kilmartin on this topic, “Resisting ethnic prejudice by other means,” at

    https://www.samizdata.net/2019/05/resisting-ethnic-prejudice-by-other-means/

  12. Interesting. I see from Neo’s link that Herr Klein issued his pro-kippot statement after the BBC report to which I linked. Per the latter, Israel and others were a mite exercised about his proclamation — as were Niall and the Samizdata commenters, including me.

    I wish I’d read the article before writing my comment. The point of Niall’s posting remains, however. Many people appear to share the mindset that the victim of a crime brought it on him- or herself, as when the lady is raped “because she wore a short skirt.”

    Hide under the bed, because if you don’t and trouble finds you, it will be your fault.

  13. huxley,

    Wouk is a favorite of mine. I reread Caine Mutinty, Winds of War, and War and Remberance yearly. Great novels that I never tire reading. Same goes for Milagro Beanfield War, Shogun, and Eye of the Needle. All wonderful, compelling stories.

  14. parker: I loved the von Roon material which Pug Henry translated with commentary! Made me think harder about WW II.

  15. I too favorably recollect the hardbound Winds of War, indeed, as an instrument of my salvation though not a thing read. Rather, as a tome of heft and dimension sufficient to substitute for the recommended family Bible, to be gripped and swung as a club to clobber the stuffing out of an intensely painful synovial cyst at the base of my right thumb just below the wrist on the palmside surface. Thus, from the medical reference consulted: bash the (pseudo) cystic bulge with the family Bible or like volume, breaking the underlying tendon sheath like a popped balloon and the collected synovial fluid will dissipate, resorb, and the irritated nerve will cease to throb.

    So my partner T. agreed to do. He, however, not wishing to do harm in the process, swung the Wouk too gently on the first pass and only succeeded in redoubling my pain. Through my howls he had his second go, heavier, which worked like a charm. Tendon sheath broke, fluid ebbed away and the pain — days in building — was gone in about 15 minutes. Much thanks to Mr Wouk’s thoroughgoing writing. I won’t forget.

  16. “This shouldn’t take anything away from the Danes, but it does explain a lot.”

    I’m not judging the Danes, since I’ve not looked into their internal politics nor into the actual forces which their defense establishment could marshal on the day Denmark was invaded. But I believe they lasted about 2 hours before the government surrendered. You can watch the Danish movie about it on Amazon Prime. It concerns a unit that fought on into the afternoon, unaware that the government had surrendered. Not exactly Thermopylae or Wake Island …

    I’m not sure how defensible Jutland and some number of islands are anyway, unless you are willing to be bombed to ruin for the sake of defiance … and some of course are so willing.

  17. Can anybody confirm this? I heard that the Royal Danish Life Guard opened fire on the Germans when they approached the palace and died to the man. Of course, that’s the kind of thing you expect to hear from a defeated country.

  18. I can confirm that some Danes refused to surrender. They went into exile.

  19. “Can anybody confirm this? I heard that the Royal Danish Life Guard opened fire on the Germans when they approached the palace and died to the man. Of course, that’s the kind of thing you expect to hear from a defeated country.”

    I can only cite what i have read. But it seems unlikely that Wiki would intentionally mislead based on partisan interests on this matter.

    Wiki gives total Danish casualties as:

    26 killed[6]
    23 wounded[6]
    (includes casualties of the civil air defence)
    12 aircraft destroyed
    14 aircraft damaged

  22. https://www.thelocal.dk/20150310/danish-home-guard-to-disarm-following-terror-attack

    This was a bitter thing. A great many Danes believed their government sold them out to the Germans.

    I always thought the USN could have got a lot better ship for a lot less money than the Littoral Combat Ship. LCS (known in the fleet as the Little Crappy Ship) If we bought the Ivar Huitfeldt. I’m shifting to favor the Italian Alpino. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

  25. Steve57 — you know better than that! We’d never buy any craft designed by another country: that would violate the basic rule, Not Invented Here.

  26. I also like the Swedes and the Norwegians.

    When I was in college one of my drinking buddies was a Norwegian.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3jSWSa6aBM

    “Norwegian Resistance 1 of 3”

    During my younger days I hung around with Swedes at Sveadal in the Santa Cruz mountains.

    https://www.sveadal.org/

    I’m eternally grateful the Scandinavians put up with an Italian American greaseball like me. Because, JFC, those blondes were stunning. I mean, take your breath away.

    But then I always wanted to do a port visit Haifa.

    https://www.amazon.com/Im-Staying-My-Boys-Basilone/dp/0312611447

    You do, if you happen to be in Kali, bow your heads when you head south on the I5?

  29. huxley…”The literary world could never embrace his work as proper literature with the exception of “The Caine Mutiny”….even The Caine Mutiny got some negative responses when it first came out, notably from Commentary (they finally got around to apologizing in 2013). See my review and discussion, here:

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/59817.html

    For those who’ve only seen the movie, the book is very much worth reading.

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