Arson attack on the Bergische Synagogue: Wuppertal is not an isolated case, but a trend with numbers

Two days before Yom Kippur, a man throws Molotov cocktails at the side entrance of the Bergische Synagogue in Wuppertal. The flames were extinguished within minutes, no one was injured and the property damage remained minimal. The police arrested an 18-year-old, and shortly afterwards a second suspect. The state security agency is investigating, the motive is still officially open. The pattern behind it has been known for years.

The same synagogue was attacked in 2014, during the Gaza war. The fact that this building of all places is targeted a second time is no coincidence, but shows how anti-Semitic violence repeats itself in the same places as soon as public pressure subsides and there are no consequences. A few days earlier, "Free Palestine" had already been sprayed on the synagogue wall - an incident that disappeared as a side note in many places before the incendiary devices flew.

The numbers behind it are no coincidence. RIAS NRW registered 1,102 anti-Semitic incidents nationwide in 2025 - an increase of 17 percent compared to 940 in the previous year. Nationwide, RIAS documented exactly 807 anti-Semitic incidents with a right-wing extremist background in 2025, more than ever since the survey began in 2020 - in 2024 there were 562. Anyone who speaks of "lone perpetrators" in the face of such curves is concealing a structural development: right-wing violence against Jewish life in Germany is not decreasing, it continues to escalate, regardless of the status of the war in the Middle East.

Central Council President Josef Schuster speaks of a “normalization of anti-Semitism” and calls on the security authorities to finally take the protection of Jewish communities seriously. That's right, but it falls short when politicians simultaneously use repressive vocabulary such as "imported anti-Semitism" in order to distract from their own responsibility for a climate in which right-wing agitation has been able to thrive unchallenged for years. The rise in right-wing extremist anti-Semitic incidents is not the work of a single migrant scene, but of a societal shift to the right, which ranges from AfD election successes to incendiary devices in Wuppertal.

What is missing here is not a new anti-terror regulation, but consistent anti-fascist self-protection: neighborhood watches, solidarity structures with Jewish communities, and the clear announcement that no one can get away with right-wing violence, no matter how small the property damage ends up being. The incendiary device that fails to ignite is no reason to calm down - it is a failed attempt. The next one will not be better prepared, but civil society's response must be.

Sources

Ynetnews: Arson attempt targets synagogue in western Germany
Jewish General: Arson attack on synagogue
domradio.de: Arson attack on Wuppertal synagogue
RIAS Federal Association: Annual Report 2025 (press release)