Published: 9 December 2022
Last updated: 18 September 2025
Yonatan Langer cuts an unassuming figure nowadays. Soft-spoken and polite, the 38-year-old Tel Aviv resident wears a kippah, keeps kosher and prays every day — the model of an observant Jew.
Fifteen years ago, however, he was Lutz Langer, a hardcore neo-Nazi at the centre of Berlin’s fascist rock scene working to destroy what he saw as a degenerate Jewish government.
Born in East Germany to Christian parents in 1983, Mr Langer grew up in a typical middle-class home. After joining a karate class as a teenager he was radicalised by a far-right instructor, and gradually became enmeshed deeper and deeper within the Berlin far-right rock scene.
“We started to listen to neo-Nazi music in training camps and from listening to music, we made copies,” he said.
After a decade as a white supremacist leader, he gradually became disillusioned and began to look for an escape from the movement.
Remarkably, at that point a dream inspired him to turn to Kabbalah, through which he got in touch with a Jewish man, who in turn helped him to renounce his violent past.
Teaching Jewish values, he now claims, could help many others deradicalise and reject hatred.
“I had to find a reason why not to be negative, and one of the things was I want to be in control so I ask a lot of questions and Judaism always explained this,” he said.
READ MORE
'I was a Nazi fighting a race war against Jews — now I wrap tefillin on my arm' (Jewish Chronicle)
