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Germany names anti-Semitism panel

Germany named a panel of 10 Jewish and non-Jewish experts to an anti-Semitism commission.

The panel's first meeting will be Sept. 9, according to the announcement Wednesday by Federal Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble.

The panel, whose members are an ethnic and religious mix, is to report regularly on anti-Semitism and efforts to combat it in Germany. It also will make recommendations based on best practices and consult with other experts.

It includes grass-roots activists, educators, scholars and experts in historical and current anti-Semitism, in right-wing extremism and Islamic extremism.

The members are Aycan Demirel, co-founder and director of the Kreuzberg Initiative Against Anti-Semitism in Berlin; Olaf Farschid, expert on Islam and consultant to the Berlin State Interior Ministry; Elke Gryglewski, member of the educational department at the House of the Wannsee Conference, a memorial and educational program; Johannes Heil, an expert in historical anti-Semitism and prorector at the College for Jewish Studies in Heidelberg; Peter Longerich, historian at the London-based Centre for the Holocaust and Twentieth-Century History; and Armin Pfahl-Traughber, political scientist and sociologist at the Federal University in Brühl.

Also, Martin Salm, president of the board of the foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future" (EVZ), Berlin; Hans-Julius Schoeps, historian and director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies at Potsdam University; Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, political scientist and fellow at the "European Foundation for Democracy" in Brussels; Juliane Wetzel, historian at the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at the Technical University of Berlin.
Read entire article at JTA