In an opinion piece for Euronews, Sacha Roytman Dratwa, CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, warns that Jewish life in Europe is increasingly lived behind barriers - a sign, he argues, the continent is failing its post-Holocaust promise.
In 2004, I left Belgium as a young Jewish boy with a feeling I could not fully articulate at the time, but one that was already deeply present: as a Jew, I was not fully welcome. It wasn't always explicit. It didn't always come in the form of violence. Nevertheless, it was there; in the atmosphere, in the tension, in the quiet understanding that being openly Jewish came with a price and made you a target.
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More than twenty years later, I look back and what is most striking is not that things have improved. It's that they have gotten far worse.
'Today, Jewish life in parts of Europe exists behind barriers'
Today, Jewish life in parts of Europe exists behind barriers that should never have been necessary. Synagogues are guarded, schools are protected by armed soldiers, and children grow up walking past military personnel just to enter their classrooms.
This is not normal, and yet, it has become normalised.
This past week alone proves it. In London, ambulances belonging to a emergency openly service run by Jews yet serving all parts of the population were set on fire outside a synagogue, a deliberate act of intimidation.
In Belgium, the country I left, a synagogue in Liège was targeted in an explosion. In Amsterdam, a Jewish school was attacked, part of a broader pattern of violence against Jewish institutions. And the response? More soldiers deployed to protect Jewish schools and synagogues.
80 years after the Holocaust, Jewish children need military protection
Let that sink in. Eighty years after the Holocaust, Jewish children in Europe once again need military protection to go to school. This is not a security reality, it is a societal failure.
This is not abstract for me. My own family still lives there. My sister walks the streets of a European capital and makes a conscious decision every day not to wear any visible Jewish symbol. Not because she is ashamed but because she is afraid. Afraid of being targeted and attacked. That is the reality of being Jewish in Europe today.
My grandparents, who survived the Holocaust, did not live to see this moment. They believed, as many did, that Europe had learned, that their grandchildren would grow up in a different world. A safer world. A world where being Jewish would not require fear.
They were wrong. What makes this reality even more difficult to grasp is the comparison that so many Jews are now forced to make. Israel, the indigenous and national homeland of the Jewish people, is a country at war.
It faces rockets, terror attacks, and constant external threats. And yet, in Israel, Jewish life is open. Synagogues are open, and communities are visible. Jewish identity is not something that needs to be hidden or protected behind visible military presence. It is simply lived.
How is it that in Europe, a continent that built its modern identity on the memory of the Holocaust, Jews feel less secure than in a country under constant threat? The answer is uncomfortable, but clear.
In Israel, Jewish life is the foundation of society. In Europe, Jewish life is increasingly treated as something that must be secured, contained, and protected. When a society reaches that point, it has already failed.
When I left Belgium in 2004, it felt like a personal instinct; something I couldn't fully explain. Today, it feels like a warning sign that was ignored, because what was once a feeling has now become reality.
'Should we stay or should we go?'
Jewish communities across Europe are asking themselves questions that should have disappeared from history: Should we hide who we are? Should we remove our symbols?Should we stay or should we go?
No child should grow up asking those questions, and yet, today, many do. Eighty years after the Holocaust, the promise was clear, that Jewish life would flourish freely in Europe not behind barriers, not under military protection, not in fear. That promise is now being broken.
If Europe cannot ensure that a Jewish woman can walk safely wearing a symbol of her identity, that a synagogue does not need soldiers, that a Jewish school is not a target then something fundamental has gone wrong. This is not only about Jews. It is about what Europe has become and what it is willing to tolerate. Because history has shown, time and again, that when Jews no longer feel safe, it is never just about the Jews.
Sacha Roytman Dratwa is CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), a global coalition engaging more than 1,000 partner organisations and seven million people from a diverse array of religious, political, and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world's oldest hatred.