Fire and Broken Glass:
The Rise of Antisemitism in Europe

LCHR report

LCHR report in French

Discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic or racial group has increasingly taken the form of racist threats and violence in a pattern across much of Europe, from Russia to the United Kingdom. This disturbing pattern, documented in a report released by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, has included physical assaults on individuals – and fire-bombings, gunfire, window smashing, and vandalism of Jewish homes, schools, synagogues and other community institutions.

European governments are not accurately reporting or effectively combating antisemitic violence, creating a climate that has contributed to the rise of anti-Jewish speech and violence. Often the official response of governments is silence, or to attribute attacks to political protest. For much of early 2002, the French government made few public statements about the rising tide of anti-Jewish violence; the government has now firmly condemned the violence, but has yet to release official statistics on such incidents in 2002. The governments of Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Russia, where a majority of the other attacks have been concentrated, have made public statements condemning the surge in violence. But the governments have released little documentation of anti-Jewish violence, and have, according to nongovernmental observers, done little to abate the rising tide.

Coverage of antisemitic violence in Europe by the U.S. Department of State’s annual reports on human rights conditions and religious intolerance is also inadequate.

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