Jews could ‘disappear completely’ from Europe, says chairman of World Holocaust Forum

“It is a possibility that in 30 years there will be no Jews in Europe,” Moshe Kantor told Israel’s Army Radio.

By World Israel News Staff 

The possibility that Jews could “disappear completely as a people” from Europe has been a central, ominous theme at the center of interviews granted recently by Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress and Chair of the World Holocaust Forum’s Organizing Committee.

The Fifth World Holocaust Forum takes place on Thursday in Jerusalem in the presence of dozens of world leaders arriving in Israel to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland and to show a resolve to fight a wave of current anti-Semitism.

Vice President Mike Pence, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Prince Charles and the presidents of Germany, Italy, and Austria are among the more than 40 dignitaries who will be attending the event.

“It is a possibility that in 30 years there will be no Jews in Europe,” Kantor told Israel’s Army Radio, in an interview which aired on Wednesday.

“Forty percent are considering leaving Europe entirely,” he added, noting that already there is a rate of three percent who are leaving on an annual basis.

“The story should be frightening because mankind shall be frightened,” said Kantor in an interview with the French-based AFP news agency earlier this month.

The world is “more dangerous than in the 1930s,” he argued, due to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction combining with the phenomenon of “polarization.”

“We do see that the rise of anti-Semitism is a specific feature of the polarization of the political spectrum. This is exactly the symptom of the global catastrophe which is coming, that society allows extremism to come into executive power in democratic ways,” he told Army Radio.

“Anti-Semitism could be a slippery slope to a global catastrophe,” Kantor warned.

Tel Aviv University researchers reported last year that violent attacks against Jews grew significantly in 2018, with the largest reported number of Jews killed in anti-Semitic acts in decades.