Anetta Kahane

Kahane's parents Max Kahane and Doris Kahane (born Machol) were secular Jews who fled from Nazi Germany in 1933. Max Kahane fought in the Spanish Civil War against General Francisco Franco and later in the French Resistance against the Nazis. In a prison camp of the Vichy Regime he met Doris Machol, who was also active in the Resistance. They married in 1945, moved to East Berlin, and became loyal citizens of the German Democratic Republic and members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

Kahane is the youngest of three children. Following Max Kahane's jobs as a journalist for the East German news agency and state media, the family lived in New Delhi (India) from 1957 to 1960, in Rio de Janeiro in 1963. Like other Holocaust survivors her parents did not speak about their experience of persecution, but their psychological traumas influenced Kahane. In school Kahane was open about her Judaism, against her parents' will.

From 1988, Kahane was active in the civil rights movement of the GDR opposition, and supported foreigners and minorities. She participated in the East German Round Table. In 1990 she was appointed to be the first and last official for foreigners of the East Berlin Senate. After witnessing street violence and attacks on Sinti, Romani people, Africans and Vietnamese, she engaged constantly against daily racism. She pressured the city leadership to transform former military barracks into housing for eastern European migrants and refugees.

Since 1989, Kahane has initiated many associations for issues of foreigners, and became a respected expert on this topic. Responding to increased racist violence in the former East Germany, in 1998, Kahane initiated the Amadeu Antonio Foundation as an organised effort to combat xenophobia, antisemitism and right-wing extremism. In 2012 she was awarded the Moses Mendelssohn prize for her work, donated by the Senate of Berlin. In July 2015, she supported the suggestion of the Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg Winfried Kretschmann to send more refugees to the New states of Germany because, according to her, the number of people of color is too low there. In December 2015, she followed an invitation of the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection to take part in a task force against hate speech on social media.

Kahane is a regular columnist for Berliner Zeitung and Frankfurter Rundschau.

In 2015, there was controversy after she stated in an interview with Der Tagesspiegel that the fact that "one-third of Germany's territory has remained predominantly white" is "the biggest declaration of bankruptcy" of German politics since Germany's reunification.

Kahane was a potential target of the suspected right-wing terrorist and Bundeswehr soldier Franco Albrecht, who had planned to kill her with a shotgun in Berlin.

Kahane is a critic of "hostility toward Israel" within German society, which she considers rooted in antisemitism.