Anetta Kahane, founder and chairperson of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, reports on the new forms of right-wing extremism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Europe since the Fall of the Iron Curtain 1989/90.







Anetta Kahane, journalist and translator, was born in 1954 in Berlin. Her parents were exiled through the period of National Socialism, joining the French Résistance. As a child she lived for a number of years in New Delhi and Rio de Janeiro, since her father served as foreign correspondent for various German Democratic Republic publications. She was so impressed by Brazilian culture that she later majored in Latin American Studies. Anetta Kahane openly embraced her Jewishness during her years at school, wearing a necklace with a Star of David. She brushed off the limitations, criticisms and contradictions of German Communism until, working on assignments as a Portuguese translator in São Tomé und Mozambique, she was confronted with such brutally cynical, racist and malicious GDR officials that she realized she would either have to draw new conclusions or go mad.

With the Fall of the Wall in 1989, Kahane became the first Commissioner of Foreigners in East Berlin. In 1991 she founded the Regional Workshop on Foreigners Issues and Youth Employment and the New Countries School. In 1998 she created the Amadeu Antonio Foundation with the goal of strengthening democratic civil societies and combatting right-wing extremism, racism and antisemitism. To this end, she supports local initiatives and projects in the areas of youth and school, victim protection and assistance, alternative youth culture, and communal networking. She has received high praise for her most recent project, a traveling exhibition concerning antisemitism in the GDR ("That never happened here"), with a catalog soon to appear in English.

Anetta Kahane has been honored with various awards, including the 2002 Moses Mendelssohn Prize given by the City of Berlin.


New York Berlin Dialogs: "Right-wing Extremism and Antisemitism in Europe since the Reunification of Germany 1989/90"
Lecture by Anetta Kahane
When?  12 November 2009, 19.00 p.m.
Where?  Robert Koch Hörsaal, Dorotheenstrasse 96, 10117 Berlin

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