Merz and Knobloch mark 20 years of Munich's Ohel Jakob synagogue amid antisemitism concerns

A jubilee under heavy security

The Ohel Jakob synagogue in Munich marked its 20th anniversary on Monday, 9 November 2026, with a ceremony attended by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Bavarian Minister President Markus Söder, Bavarian Landtag president Ilse Aigner and Munich mayor Dominik Krause. The building opened on 9 November 2006, deliberately on the anniversary of the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, when the first Ohel Jakob synagogue in Munich was destroyed in the Reichspogromnacht. The new building is a cube with a stone base that recalls the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and RP Online reports it is among the largest Jewish new-build projects in Europe since 1945. Charlotte Knobloch, a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor who has presided over the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde München und Oberbayern for more than 40 years, described the synagogue as a place of encounter that visitors from across the world have come to know.

Merz: normal Jewish life still not possible

Merz described the high walls, armoured glass and armed guards around Jewish institutions as a daily reality for Jews in Munich and across Germany. He told the ceremony that this security reminds people that normal Jewish life is still not possible in the country.

“High walls, armoured glass, armed security forces in front of Jewish institutions: this constantly reminds us that normal, open, visible Jewish life is still not possible in Germany.”

Merz said that as a German he was endlessly grateful that Jews had set up home again in Germany and in Munich after the Shoah. He said antisemitism is now pervasive, sometimes disguised as anticolonial "liberation struggle" or "Israel criticism", and that the fight against it can only be won in people's minds. He added that police protection is only a stopgap and pledged that the federal government would do everything in its power to protect Jewish life in Germany and abroad. Merz also said that Germany stands unwaveringly at Israel's side, linking this to the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023.

Knobloch on normality and extremism

Knobloch recalled that the opening on 9 November 2006 had felt like a morning full of optimism. She said the synagogue has been a place of refuge as well as a meeting place, and that Jewish life in Germany has been especially marked by attacks, accusations and vandalism since 7 October 2023.

“We are here and we stay here, because we are at home here.”

Knobloch named the return of an extreme right, a morally misguided left and hatred of Israel disguised as a sincere attitude as drivers of antisemitism. She said Jews are still waiting for the day when they can be Jewish in complete normality and live without insecurity. At her greeting she welcomed the news from Berlin that Ilse Aigner had been named the Union's candidate for federal president as a great joy for everyone present.

Söder and Aigner on the Berlin debate

Söder linked the government formation currently under way in Berlin to whether a new government clearly separates itself from antisemitism, and said such a result would be intolerable for the country. He pointed to completely new challenges to the protection of Jewish life coming from the far left and from Islamism. Aigner warned that antisemitism comes from the right and the left and creeps into the centre of society, and she said hatred of Jews must not be tolerated in any form. Handelsblatt also reported her references to integration deficits in some Muslim milieus.

Key dates

The ceremony placed the 2026 anniversary within a sequence that runs from the 1938 pogrom to the Hamas attack of 2023. The timeline below sets out the dates the articles name.