Mr. Friedman, in your latest book you bitterly complain about the inadequate response of the majority German society to the attacks of Hamas on Israel. What kind of reaction would you have liked?

Humane. There were people in this country who celebrated the attack and its inhumane methods by chanting “Death to the Jews!” in the streets. In contrast, people could and should have shown an empathetic, solidarity-based response – and they didn't. Germany's largest solidarity demonstration took place at the Brandenburg Gate. Maybe 15,000 people came there. Disappointing.

“How pathetic,” the book says.

To put it bluntly: In Willy Brandt's speech a few weeks after the attack, I told the audience, “How nice to see you all again! I've been worried about you. I thought maybe you were sick or something bad had happened. I even did a missing person report. Because I needed you. Where were you?” I asked this as a Jew, as a citizen and as a human being.It was a moment of pain, a moment of being alone.

You also have a doubt, a bad one: “Could it be that empathy doesn't work for Jews?”

If you will, I would leave that sentence unanswered and leave the answer up to the readers.

Where does this attitude come from? Is this something we still know about the “Third Reich” where murderous fantasies eventually turned into the actual murder of millions?

Whether the majority of Germans in the “Third Reich” understood what would be the endpoint of the widely propagated anti-Jewish violence—namely, Auschwitz and the murder of all Jews—cannot be conclusively determined, even in retrospect. But it can be said that the many sources of this violence had a large majority of those who, due to anti-Jewish stereotypes and prejudices, were already used to and advocated that Jews should not be treated like everyone else. people. Adorno talks about “Jews about Jews”; For centuries, Christians have heard the story of how the Jews murdered Jesus, and hatred of Jews is also a part of Islam. In this way, a kind of supposed cultural memory was created. This is what we pass down from generation to generation. It is enough for a three- or four-year-old child to hear his father, mother, uncle or whoever say: “That's how they are, Jews. There's something wrong with them.”

What does that mean?

Anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews is not a German invention. But Auschwitz is a German invention. And after Auschwitz, it should have been the case that anti-Semitism in Germany as we experience it today would not be as virulent – or if it did, it would experience a very different backlash. I am very skeptical as to whether the often evoked commemorative culture really happened and is happening in Germany. The fact is that in most families there was silence – the “second fault” of the Germans, as Ralph Giordano said.

Were you encouraged by last week's mass protests against right-wing extremism?