OF COURSE, what really counts is the anti-Semitism espoused — or not — by politicians. There’s none of it in either major party. Bettina Martin, a smooth spokeswoman for the Social Democrats as well as an adept spinmeister who would not have been out of place in Bill Clinton’s war room, reiterated a line articulated by Schröder at the party’s convention in May: Möllemann is using "anti-Semitic sentiment to catch votes from the far right." Such tactics, she added, aren’t "acceptable in a democracy, and a coalition can’t be formed with them."

As for the Christian Democrats, party leader Edmund Stoiber — who currently heads the Bavarian Free State, one of 16 Lander ("states") in Germany’s federal system — also denounces Möllemann. I didn’t speak to Stoiber, who was busy campaigning (his slogan is "Laptops and Lederhosen"), but his comments were given to me by aides and widely available in the press. As though in a contest to determine who can condemn anti-Semitism the loudest, the Social Democrats complain that their denunciation of Möllemann came both earlier and more forcefully than the Christian Democrats’. What matters — and what won’t be known until after the election on September 22 — is whether the Christian Democrats will accept the FDP, with an ascendant Möllemann, as a coalition partner. Unlike the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats have not ruled out such a coalition.

In a recent Der Spiegel poll, almost 50 percent of respondents said they believe Germany still has a special responsibility for Jews. Interestingly, those who gave the highest positive response to this question were affiliated with the Greens at 79 percent, followed by the Social Democrats at 55 percent, and the Christian Democrats at just 40 percent. In this respect, the German Green Party outdoes the American version (both have links to the Global Greens movement). Unlike the American Greens, who are still struggling to find an identity and among whom virulently anti-Israel opinions are frequently voiced, the German Greens have emerged as relatively supportive of Israel. Although he strongly advocates negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Foreign Minister Fischer, the Greens’ highest-ranking politician, is uniquely outspoken among European politicians in favor of Israel’s right to self-defense. Fischer got his start in politics as a street-fighting anarchist in Frankfurt during the 1970s (Germany’s Der Stern magazine caused a stir last year when it published a 1973 photo of Fischer battling a police officer in a Frankfurt riot), during which time he harbored an anti-Israel bias. But over time, Fischer and other German Greens recognized that the anti-Israel sentiment of some groups often mutated into a form of anti-Semitism — something the Greens, with their strong sense of the burden of history, want to avoid at all costs. Determined to avoid such a stance, therefore, the Greens now defend Israel’s right to exist. It’s an evolution in thought that likely stems from the guilt many Germans feel about their country’s past.

Still, despite Der Spiegel’s poll and my conversations with ordinary Germans — which revealed positive developments in Germany’s relationship with its Jews, Israel, and even its past — the splashy magazine covers warning of burgeoning anti-Semitism are right on the mark. The evidence can be found in the same Der Spiegel poll that points to such progress. A little-remarked-upon question in the poll asked if respondents agreed with the following statement: "What Israel does with the Palestinians is in principle the same as what the Nazis in the Third Reich did to the Jews." Nearly a third of all respondents said yes.

It’s a sickening statistic that tells us two things about Germany. The first is that many Germans aren’t getting a fair picture of what is going on between Israel and the Palestinians. Whatever anyone may think about the conflict, it in no way resembles the whole-scale, deliberate, automated slaughter of one ethnic group by another that defined the Holocaust. The second thing it reveals is that nearly a third of the Germans who responded to Der Spiegel’s poll have absolutely no understanding of what their forebears did at places like Auschwitz, a killing factory at which 2000 Jews were routinely murdered each day. Operated at maximum capacity, Auschwitz’s system could kill 12,000 to 15,000 Jews daily. To even begin to compare this with what’s happening in the Middle East is ridiculous. The significance of doing so is obvious: a good chunk of the German population is tuning out the conversation about its past.

"For younger people, many are not interested in this discussion of anti-Semitism," says Holger Dohmen, a columnist at Hamburger Abendblatt, a right-leaning Hamburg daily newspaper. "Anti-Semitism is some sort of virtual discussion for them. When I talk to my daughters, who are 27 and 30, they don’t understand what I mean when I talk about the responsibility I feel about what my fathers and grandfathers have done."

With this in mind, Möllemann’s boast that he can capture 18 percent of the vote doesn’t seem so preposterous. Political analysts figure that the politician is trying to woo three distinct groups: members of Germany’s small but persistent far-right wing; members of Germany’s Islamic immigrant community; and the undecided young voters who no longer wish to be burdened by the past. Möllemann will probably get the first group. There aren’t enough voting immigrants who agree with him to make the second group statistically significant — unlike in France, where such immigrants make up a significant electoral bloc. The real question is how many voters in the third group will pull the voting lever for FDP candidates in the September election. As yet, nobody knows the answer.

Some optimists, such as the Social Democratic leaders I spoke with privately, have cited Der Spiegel’s poll results as evidence that Möllemann’s support is weak. Others, however, suggest the poll results may reflect something similar to the "Bradley effect." A phenomenon noted by American pollsters, the Bradley effect takes its name from former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley’s 1982 run for California governor. In that race, polls routinely showed Bradley, a moderate African-American, with a five percent lead over Republican George Deukmejian — who ultimately won the election. Pollsters determined that whites, fearing accusations of racism, had taken to lying about whom they planned to vote for. Experts in Germany, where political correctness has fused with the country’s tendency toward outward conformity, believe that more people may agree with Möllemann than the polls indicate.

"The problem of Möllemann will be solved by the election," says the Weisse Rose's Kaufmann. "If not, we have a real problem." Jay Tuck, an American who produces Tagesthemen, Germany’s most prominent television-newsmagazine program, has stopped running stories on the Möllemann/Friedman affair on the grounds that publicizing it only popularizes the FDP leader’s cause. "Minister Möllemann. Get used to it," Tuck says. "He could be the foreign minister."

THE MOST FRIGHTENING thing about Der Spiegel’s poll, however, is that the percentage of Germans who equate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with the Nazis’ treatment of Jews is the same as the percentage of voters who backed Hitler in 1930, his breakthrough year. It’s often forgotten that Hitler only came to power through a deal with Germany’s ruling class of industrialists and the military, which believed it could control him. The Nazis finished as the second-leading party in 1930 with more than six million votes, but this represented little more than 35 percent of the total vote. Only with collusion from other leaders, who offered him a place in the government, was Hitler ultimately voted in as chancellor in 1933.

None of this is to say that Möllemann is like Hitler. He isn’t, though he flirts with anti-Semitism. The point is that with nearly a third of Germany's voters likening Israel's recent actions to those of the Nazis in the Holocaust, there is fertile ground for the success of an anti-Semitic candidacy. In a system with proportional representation, this represents a frightening trend.

There’s a confusing maze near the end of Berlin’s Jewish Museum. One exhibit on Germany’s past follows another. Finally, visitors reach a section about modern Germany that tells the story of how the country has tried to assimilate immigrants and make itself into a more civilized place for Jews and others. When I left this final section about the Germany of today, I went through a door and found myself back in a section devoted to the Third Reich. I don’t know if that’s a deliberate part of the design, but the metaphor couldn’t be clearer: Germany’s present could lead to its past.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com