Felix Klein, the governmental commissioner for Jewish life and the fight against antisemitism, emphatically supports the participation of Jews in the Bundeswehr’s new military service. He explained to the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland” that it is “self‑evident that the new service applies equally to members of the Jewish community as to all other parts of the population”. Klein noted that Jews already serve on an equal footing within the armed forces. The same point of view was echoed by Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, who affirmed that the Jewish community backs the federal government’s direction and the modernization of military service.
In contrast, Ron Dekel, chair of the Jewish Students’ Union (JSUD), described the current debate over conscription as “partially unrealistic”. He argued that the discussion fails to reflect the lived realities of young people of migration background and those whose family histories and identities involve particular experiences with German state authority. Dekel added that, given Germany’s historical context and the rise of racism, the omission of these perspectives constitutes a “glaring failure”. He further cautioned that even the “blood sacrifices for the fatherland” made by Jews during the First World War did not alter the deeply entrenched antisemitic attitudes in society; if they had not been killed in the war, many would have “with high probability in the gas chambers by their former comrades later” he said.