News

Actions

German FM: Refugees must reject anti-Semitism

German FM: Refugees must reject anti-Semitism
Posted at 6:35 AM, Mar 15, 2016
and last updated 2016-03-15 09:35:32-04

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's foreign minister said refugees who find shelter in his country must reject anti-Semitism.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Tuesday that whoever comes to Germany has to accept that "anti-Semitism is against our constitution, against our civilization — against everything we believe in and everything we have learned."

Germany has been debating how to integrate more than 1 million asylum-seekers who arrived last year, most of them Muslims from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The country has also seen a recent rise in nationalism, partly driven by groups who dispute Germany's sole responsibility for the historical crimes of the Nazis.

Steinmeier told a conference on anti-Semitism in Berlin that "there is and can be no place for anti-Semitism in our understanding of a free, democratic and tolerant Germany."