Sigmount Königsberg, the Anti-Semitism Commissioner for the Jewish Community of Berlin.
"One of Wenzel Michalski’s early recollections of growing up in southern Germany in the 1970s was of his father, Franz, giving him some advice: “Don’t tell anyone that you’re Jewish.” Franz and his mother and his little brother had survived the Holocaust by traveling across swaths of Eastern and Central Europe to hide from the Gestapo, and after the war, his experiences back in Germany suggested that, though the Nazis had been defeated, the anti-Semitism that was intrinsic to their ideology had not. This became clear to Franz when his teachers in Berlin cast stealthily malicious glances at him when Jewish characters — such as Shylock in 'The Merchant of Venice' — came up in literature. 'Eh, Michalski, this exactly pertains to you,' he recalls one teacher telling him through a clenched smile. Many years later, when he worked as an animal-feed trader in Hamburg, he didn’t tell friends that he was Jewish and held his tongue when he heard them make anti-Semitic comments. And so Franz told his son Wenzel that things would go easier for him if he remained quiet about being Jewish. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: The Prophet of Germany’s New Right (Oct. 10, 2017)
A monument to Jewish victims of the Holocaust outside the Old Jewish Cemetery in Berlin.
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