Contemporary Church History Quarterly
Volume 31, Number 3 (Fall 2025)
Eighty Years Later: The Churches’ Responsibility in an Age of Resurgent Antisemitism
By Martina Cucchiara, Bluffton University
Since October 7, 2023, Uwe Dziuballa’s life in Chemnitz, Saxony, has become a daily Mutprobe—a test of courage. He reports that verbal abuse, physical intimidation, and threats to his life and business have intensified drastically since the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel. The well-known Jewish restauranteur, long a target of antisemitic hatred, now ventures outside only after covering his kippa with a neutral hat. Like many Jewish Germans, Dziuballa—who is not an Israeli citizen—is being held accountable for how Israel conducts the war in Gaza.[1] Dziuballa’s story is emblematic of a broader crisis. In 2024, RIAS (Bundesverband Recherche- und Informationsstellen Antisemitismus) documented 8,527 antisemitic incidents in Germany—a staggering 77 percent increase from the previous year.[2] For the roughly 118,000 Jews in Germany, the report concluded, “antisemitism remains a pervasive feature of everyday life.” [3] A chilling reality eight decades after the Holocaust.
