The Jewish High School in Germany’s Mitte district is an imposing building. Not only is it surrounded by a fence several meters high, but video cameras also keep a watch on activity. Policemen are posted at the front of the building.

Why the strict security? To repel anti-Semitic attacks.

“I always thought Jews were integrated in German society,” says school director Barbara Wittig. “I would never have thought it possible for anti-Semitism to express itself as virulently as it has recently.”

According to a Berlin state department study on violence at Berlin’s schools, data shows a dramatic uptick in extremist crimes. During the 2004-05 school year, 62 incidents of “right-wing extremism” were logged, up from 39 the previous year.

These cold statistics find real expression in the case of one 14-year-old Jewish girl who suffered from months of anti-Semitic insults, including being spat upon and beaten by a group of Arab adolescents. Rather than endure the treatment any further, the girl found solace behind the high wall and police guard offered by the Mitte district’s Jewish High School.

In another example of the type of hate toward Jews being exhibited by German youth, a high school student blurted out, “All Jews must be gassed.” In another case, a group of youths locked a student in the chemistry lab and taunted, “Now we’ll turn on the gas.”

In October, in Parey, a town in Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt region, a 16-year-old student was forced to march around the school yard with a sign that read, “In this town I’m the biggest swine/ Because of the Jewish friends of mine.” Such treatment is reminiscent of Nazi-era practices, where Jews were treated as inhuman and German friends of Jews, belittled.

Rather than seeing random acts of racism, the Berlin Jewish community warn that this behavior represents “a new dimension in anti-Semitism.”

Racism has continually reared its ugly head across all levels of German society. While German youth commit acts of racism, German extreme-right-wing parties gain political ground. Efforts to eradicate this pestilence from the German public after the Second World War have not succeeded. Racism in Germany is still a major problem we must watch.