2009. This was a 100% increase from the year before. The perpetrators were usually young males of immigrant background from the Middle East. In 2009, the Belgian city of Antwerp, often referred to as Europe's last shtetl, experienced a surge in antisemitic violence. Bloeme Evers-Emden, an Amsterdam resident and Auschwitz survivor, was quoted in the newspaper Aftenposten in 2010: "The antisemitism now is even worse than before the Holocaust. The antisemitism has become more violent. Now they are threatening to kill us." France In 2004, France experienced rising levels of Islamic antisemitism and acts that were publicized around the world. In 2006, rising levels of antisemitism were recorded in French schools. Reports related to the tensions between the children of North African Muslim immigrants and North African Jewish children. The climax was reached when Ilan Halimi was tortured to death by the so-called "Barbarians gang", led by Youssouf Fofana. In 2007, over 7,000 members of the community petitioned for asylum in the United States, citing antisemitism in France. In the first half of 2009, an estimated 631 recorded acts of antisemitism took place in France, more than the whole of 2008. Speaking to the World Jewish Congress in December 2009, the French Interior Minister Hortefeux described the acts of antisemitism as "a poison to our republic". He also announced that he would appoint a special coordinator for fighting racism and antisemitism. Germany The period after Germany's loss of World War I led to the increased espousal of anti-Semitism and other forms of racism in the country's political discourse, for example, emotions which were initially expressed by members of the right-wing Freikorps finally culminated in the ascent of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in 1933. The Nazi Party's racial policy and the Nuremberg Race Laws against Jews and other non-Aryans represented the most explicit racist policies in twentieth century Europe. These laws deprived all Jews (including half-Jews and quarter-Jews) and all other non-Aryans of German citizenship. The official title of Jews became "subjects of the state". At first, the Nuremberg Race Laws only forbade racially mixed sexual relationships and marriages between Aryans and Jews but later they were extended to "Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring". Such interracial relationships were known as "racial pollution" Rassenschande, and they became a criminal and punishable offence under the race laws. The Nazi racial theory regarded Poles and other Slavic peoples as racially inferior