Merz: Muslim immigrants who reject Germany’s blame for Holocaust ‘must leave our country’
At reception for Maccabiah athletes, German chancellor says 'historical responsibility of our country applies just as much to those who come here to Germany from Islamic countries'
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Friday said that Muslim immigrants who refuse to acknowledge Germany’s historical responsibility for the Holocaust “must leave our country.”
“This historical responsibility of our country applies just as much to those who come here to Germany from Islamic countries,” Merz said at a Berlin reception for Jewish athletes who represented the country at this year’s Maccabiah Games, according to the dpa, German press agency.
“And anyone who fails to abide by this must leave our country,” he said.
According to reports, Merz’s remarks came after a Maccabiah basketball coach told the chancellor that Jewish athletes on his team expressed fear about wearing their team jackets, which bear a Star of David, in public.
Merz then referenced a 1985 Bundestag speech made by former German president Richard von Weizsacke, which emphasized the importance of recognizing and confronting the country’s role in the genocide of six million Jews during World War II.
Von Weizsacke said that while young people were not responsible for the Holocaust, they were responsible for its legacy.
“And that applies to German society as a whole,” said Merz, adding that he considered those remarks as set in stone.
“And I would add, given the current circumstances: that also applies to immigrants who come to Germany,” he added.
Germany has faced persistently high levels of antisemitism in recent years, with 2,197 anti-Jewish incidents recorded in Berlin in 2025, according to a report published this year by Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism, known as RIAS.
After the report was published, a German legislator said that the “threat to Jewish life is worse than at any time since the Holocaust.
The figures published in the report were down about 13 percent from 2,521 incidents the previous year, but remained more than double pre-October 7, 2023, levels. It described an increasingly hostile environment in which Jews and Israelis face harassment, intimidation, and violence in public spaces.