Berlin, Germany - Germany's Jewish communities are becoming increasingly self-assured and are opening themselves to non-Jewish citizens, a prominent leader in the faith said on Sunday.
Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Central Council of Jews, said a fundamental change in mentality was taking place amongst German Jews, revealing itself in part through the foundation of new synagogues in cities such as Berlin, Dresden or Chemnitz.
Germany's Jewish community has taken a low-key role in public life since the Nazi-era Holocaust, in which some 6 million Jews died.
Knobloch said it was important that Jewish communities were opening to the outside world, as in a few years' time there would be "no victims or perpetrators left."
Then we "will see that we need not talk about blame and dishonour, but about responsibility," Knobloch told a political seminar in the Bavarian town of Tutzing.
Knobloch, 77, also said it was important to emphasise the common heritage shared by Jews and Germans, and said there was still a lack of knowledge amongst the general population.
"We can assume that a Muslim woman walking through Munich's pedestrian zone dressed in a burqa would cause less head-scratching than a Hasidic Jew or even a man wearing a kippah," Knobloch said according to seminar guests.
The president of the Central Council of Jews voiced strong criticism of "modern" anti-Semitism, which used the politics of Israel to express resentment towards all Jews.
"The modern anti-Semite, without skinhead or combat boots, can even be an academic. And yet, he considers Jews and Israelis to be one and the same," Knobloch said.
She and many others were, "being insulted all the time for what we are doing in Israel," Knobloch told seminar guests at the Academy for Political Education.