The anti-Semitism of the 68ers in germany

On November 9, 1969, on the anniversary of "Kristallnacht", over two hundred people were gathered in Berlin's Jewish Community Centre in commemoration of the victims of Nazi Germany. Unbeknownst to them, a member of the radical Left student movement "Tupamaros West Berlin" planted a bomb in the building. The device failed to explode because the clock meant to trigger it off was connected by a rusty wire. The Tupamaros saw themselves as Germany's first urban guerillas, inspired by the Latin American role model. The brains behind the plot was Dieter Kunzelmann, a leftist radical political clown, founder of the "Kommune 1" and self-proclaimed "kingpin of Chaos". In the wake of the six-day war of 1967, Kunzelmann saw Israel as an imperial state and oppressor of the Palestinians, which must be resisted with force. His opponents inside the Left, who maintained a more nuanced view of the situation in the Middle East, accused him of having a "Jew complex".
This summer, Wolfgang Kraushaar published "Die Bombe im Jüdischen Gemeindehaus" (the bomb in the Jewish Community Centre). The book reveals previously unknown information on the 1969 plot, and sparked a heated debate about anti-Semitism in the German Left in general and in the 68er movement specifically. According to historian Götz Aly, "the German 68ers were wretchedly similar to their parents." Journalist Micha Brumlik pinpoints "the radical Left rebellion against their parents' Nazi generation as a contradictory process of identification with them and their hatred of Jews."
Kraushaar's research revealed why the Berlin police had failed (or wanted to fail) in their examination of the case. Kraushaar identified Albert Fichter as the man who placed the bomb. Fichter was given the explosives – and this detail warrants further discussion – by an agent provocateur from the Berlin intelligence service who had long had the "Tupamaros West Berlin" under surveillance. Allegedly the bomb was tinkered with so it would fail to explode. Tilman Fichter, Albert's brother, at the time chairman of the SDS (German socialist student group), explains in an interview why it was and still is taboo to talk about anti-Semitism on the Left.
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