Dear Editor,
“They spit on the children and call them ‘dirty Jews,’” a leader in the Antwerp Jewish community said. “I have a to-go bag ready,” another in Brussels confided.
This was not 1930s Nazi Germany. This was Brussels in 2026. I was there with a delegation organized by the American Jewish Committee’s Transatlantic Institute. Over several days in April, we met with European and Belgian officials, ambassadors, members of parliament, and the local Jewish community. They painted a bleak picture of what it means to be Jewish in Europe today.
They told us contemporary antisemitism comes from three directions at once: the far-right, the new-left, and Islamic extremists. According to Jewish leaders we spoke to, October 7 unleashed latent antisemitism, resulting in a renewed tolerance for, and justification of, violence against Jews. And yet, with fewer Jews in all of Belgium than in Cincinnati, many politicians hesitate to speak out for fear of upsetting constituencies that are now hostile to Jews and Israel and many times larger.
Classic antisemitic tropes are back as perpetrators of hate speech, crimes, and violence find they have little cause to worry about consequences. The European Jewish youth in particular face increasingly virulent online platforms and hostile campus life. As the Jewish community struggles, many they once thought were allies have disappeared.
To be Jewish in Europe is to live with a feeling of loneliness, a member of a small community now held directly accountable for the actions of Israel. Jews in Europe are being told that being Jewish is their entire identity and asked why they are genocidal. The implication is that Jewish guilt might somehow diminish or absolve European guilt for the Holocaust.
Before our trip, we were advised not to wear anything outwardly Jewish. We had security with us at all times. I was reprimanded for standing outside to get some fresh air; it was not secure. For an American Jew accustomed to moving through Europe without a second thought, it was a sobering glimpse into what European Jews experience daily.
“Hate goes together,” said Eitan Bergman, Secretary General of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium. Antisemitism goes hand in hand with other forms of hate: sexism, homophobia, racism. The Jewish community, according to one prominent Belgian politician, is the canary in a coal mine, a warning that hatred rarely stops with Jews.
I worry the experience of European Jews is the canary in a coal mine for American Jews, too. Already, we know the situation is worsening in ways that mirror Europe. According to the 2025 Antisemitism in America Report by the American Jewish Committee, 93% of American Jews think antisemitism is a problem in the United States today. 86% of American Jews think antisemitism in the United States has increased since October 7. The surge in attacks against Jewish people and spaces throughout the country confirm these sentiments.
Some allies remain. Katharina von Schnurbein, the EU Commission Coordinator for Combatting Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life, is one. She is not Jewish. To her, “Fighting antisemitism is about protecting democracy and values, not just Jews.”
Von Schnurbein and the European Union are working on several fronts: addressing antisemitic hate speech (Europe has stricter laws than the United States), building capacity for European-wide research on antisemitism and Jewish life, and creating tens of thousands of Holocaust sites across Europe so that physical places become testimonials as the last survivors pass away. All of this is desperately needed, and none of it is enough.
The warning of European Jews is ours to heed. In Cincinnati and throughout the United States, good work is being done. But we all must do more. We need to press our universities and schools, institutions, and online platforms to treat antisemitism as seriously as we take other forms of hate. We need to show up, engage, and align with others who value human rights and intercultural alliances, now, while we still can.
We have seen where this goes. We have also seen what it looks like when people choose differently.
On our last day in Belgium, Prince Michel de Ligne took us on a tour of Château de Beloeil. It was there that his grandparents concealed dozens of Jewish children from the Nazis, housing and educating them among a larger group of children whose parents had been taken by the war.
As I peered out a small window in the musty, cobwebbed attic where Jewish children hid during Nazi inspections of the Château, it was not hard to visualize soldiers marching on the cobblestones below. Not a single Jewish child was ever discovered.
Rachel Loftspring
AJC Cincinnati
