"Antisemitism is a real threat to democracies around the world," Karoline Preisler, the granddaughter of a Nazi soldier, became one of Germany's most well-known counter-protesters to the pro-Palestinian rallies, told Walla in a Tuesday interview.
"Until now, we have been watching from the sidelines as civilization crumbles, and I felt I had to change that," she said, adding that the October 7 attack marked a turning point: "What happened in Israel showed that what seemed far away is already here, all over the world."
Preisler stands alone in pro-Palestinian protests, aiming to emphasize the "voice of sanity," using Israeli symbols and messages like "Hamas is terror," "Rape is not resistance," "Enough with anti-Semitism" - all of them in English, short and devoid of context, deliberately so that they cannot be disentangled in interpretation.
In her view, these are not ordinary protest signs but a direct intervention in the discourse, an attempt to curb the normalization of violence and anti-Semitism through an apparently simplistic but sharp statement. But this simplicity is also what makes them explosive: precisely because they are not "balanced" or complex, they provoke strong reactions - and illustrate the extent to which the very act of setting a moral boundary has become a provocative act.
She also faced verbal and physical attacks, needing protection in order to escape from the protests in many cases. In one instance, she had to be rushed to a hospital after a counter-protest. For her, it's almost a routine: "The first thing I think about is how to get out of there safely."
Preisler's family links to Nazism
A member of Germany's Free Democratic Party (FDP), Preisler has two sons and two daughters, whom she keeps out of the public eye to protect their privacy. Her links with the Nazi party come from her grandparents, both of whom lived during Nazi Germany.
Both of her grandparents were Nazi soldiers, with one of them serving as a medic during the Second World War, while the other was part of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's resistance group and the Confessing Church, an underground network which fiercely opposed the Nazi takeover of the Protestant Church and its attempts to "align" it with Nazi ideology.
"After the war, every minute of the rest of his life, as a Christian and as a lawyer, he regretted that the Holocaust had happened and dedicated every minute of his life to fighting anti-Semitism in an attempt to correct the injustice that he had failed to stop in real time," Preisler said.
She added that she felt personally obligated to continue on his path. "For him, the message of 'never again' was an obligation. For me too. Germany bears responsibility - and I bear it with it. That will never change," she explained.
Preisler's new book focuses on protests, antisemitism
Preisler's new book addresses her experience as a counterprotester, with a more personal and less theoretical view that combines her on-the-ground experience in demonstrations in Berlin, her experiences in physical and verbal confrontations, and her insights and call to action.
"This book is especially important now. It describes the attack on democracies but also offers solutions," she said, adding that Preisler began writing the book before the war, but events changed the direction of the research: "October 7, 2023, showed that October 6 has now reached the whole world."
"The writing began even earlier. I wanted to write about left-wing anti-Semitism in general. My research was already shocking then, and then October 7 came, and I had to expand the book to include the additional perspective, about Islamism, which is a real threat," she explained.
"Europe has a significant problem with extremists," she added. "There are countries where right-wing extremists cause damage. And there are many countries in Europe where Islamists, together with left-wing extremists, persecute Jews. Terrible times are truly coming, I won't lie to you. We must stop terrorism now; we won't be able to. Many are silent not because they agree - but because they are afraid."
Problem of left-wing antisemitism
"Right-wing anti-Semitism is being eradicated all over Germany, but the situation is different with left-wing anti-Semitism and Islamism," she said, and added, "Some of the media affiliated with the left not only reports but also shapes a harmful narrative and tends to soften or reframe phenomena of violence and extremist ideology instead of defining them as such clearly and sharply."
"This is a form of patronage and even reverse racism. This approach leads to the media avoiding calling certain phenomena 'Islamism' and instead using softened terms or attributing the violence to political contexts only. In other words, the desire not to be perceived as racist leads to a blurring of the problem itself and to avoiding a direct definition of it. This dwarfs terrorism."
Preisler's voice shows that the antisemitism struggle belongs not only to the past but also to the present and the future. At the end of the interview, she addresses a direct message to Israelis: "Don't give up. The people of Israel are alive."