A group tracking antisemitism in Germany said on Tuesday it documented more than 2,700 incidents in the country last year, including 63 attacks and six cases of extreme violence.
In a report, the Department for Research and Information on Anti-Semitism (RIAS) said the coronavirus pandemic with its anti-Jewish conspiracy narratives and the Middle East conflict with antisemitic criticism of Israel were the main drivers of the 2,738 incidents it documented.
The incidents include both criminal and non-criminal incidents, the group said.
The German government's commissioner to combat antisemitism, Felix Klein, called the number of incidents - more than seven per day - frightening, but also said that "at the same time, each of the reported incidents is also a step toward reducing the dark figures".
Right-wing extremists were responsible for 17 per cent of the incidents, but more than half of all the antisemitic incidents could not be assigned to a specific political view, the report said.
Among cases of "extreme violence," RIAS included an attack on a Jewish participant in a vigil for Israel in Hamburg and a shooting at a Jewish community centre in Berlin.
Altogether, 964 people - both Jews and non-Jews - were directly affected by antisemitic incidents, Benjamin Steinitz, the head of RIAS, told reporters in Berlin.
