Zentralrat der Juden Uses AI to Make Antisemitism Impossible to Ignore
#StopRepeatingStories is a 2024 public service campaign by the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland, created by Serviceplan Berlin, that uses artificial intelligence to draw direct parallels between the rise of antisemitism in contemporary Germany and the historical patterns that preceded the Holocaust, launching publicly on 27 January 2024, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The campaign's premise rests on a documented and urgent problem. Felix Klein, the Federal Government Commissioner for Combating Antisemitism, revealed at the Federal Press Conference on 25 January 2024 that 2,249 antisemitic crimes had been recorded in Germany since 7 October 2023, according to the Zentralrat der Juden's own reporting. That figure represented nearly as many incidents as occurred across the entirety of 2022, placing the scale of the crisis in sharp relief. The surge followed escalating tension and violence across the Middle East, which the Zentralrat der Juden directly linked to the domestic spike in Germany.
The campaign centres on a fictional character named Lea, whose story is constructed using AI to mirror the everyday experiences of Jewish people living in Germany today. The campaign's governing line — "How it starts is reminiscent of those days. How it continues is up to you" — frames antisemitism not as a relic of the past but as a present and escalating threat. Serviceplan Berlin designed and implemented the full initiative, with Serviceplan Make handling production. The campaign was presented for the first time at the Federal Press Conference before being released publicly two days later, where it immediately attracted widespread press and social media coverage across Germany. Its Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its strategic ambition with clarity and emotional precision, even as its reach remained concentrated within German-language media ecosystems.
The Zentralrat der Juden identified a specific and persistent failure in German public discourse. Antisemitism, the organisation argued, was consistently minimised — the experiences of Jewish people dismissed or explained away rather than confronted. That insight shapes everything about the campaign's strategic architecture. By anchoring the work to officially reported crime figures presented at a Federal Press Conference, Serviceplan Berlin ensured the campaign could not be dismissed as advocacy without evidence. The figures belonged to the state, not the campaign.
The timing of the launch on Holocaust Remembrance Day was itself a strategic statement. Germany observes 27 January as a national day of remembrance, a moment when public and media attention turns toward historical atrocity. By releasing #StopRepeatingStories on that date, the Zentralrat der Juden reframed the conversation: the day was not only about remembering the past but about recognising that the conditions enabling persecution were reasserting themselves in Germany in 2024. This reframing is the campaign's most precise strategic move.
Within the German public service advertising landscape, campaigns addressing antisemitism must compete for sustained attention against a broad range of social and political messaging. Organisations such as the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, which focuses on combating right-wing extremism and antisemitism, and the Bundesregierung's own public awareness initiatives represent the closest analogues in terms of institutional gravity and audience. What separated #StopRepeatingStories was its use of AI as a narrative device rather than a production shortcut, allowing the campaign to make an emotional argument through the language of technology that German audiences in 2024 were already attuned to. The campaign reached what Horizont described as "hundred-thousands of views" within two days of launch, a velocity that confirmed the strategic bet on digital-first distribution had paid off.
Benjamin Wolff directed the campaign film for #StopRepeatingStories, with Felix Baermann serving as director of photography, according to production credits documented across Ads of the World and house-of-communication.com. The film functions as a social experiment in documentary form, presenting the fictional Lea's experiences of antisemitism in contemporary Germany as a sequence of recognisable, mundane encounters — the kind that are individually deniable but collectively unmistakable.
The role of AI in the production is structural rather than decorative. Serviceplan Berlin used artificial intelligence to construct Lea's narrative, drawing on documented patterns of antisemitic experience to build a character whose story feels specific rather than generic. This approach solves a core creative problem: how to make the audience feel the proximity of prejudice without relying on archival imagery that could be emotionally distanced as historical. Lea exists in the present tense, and her story unfolds in environments that German viewers recognise as their own.
Jeannette Bohné, Managing Director and Creative Managing Director at Serviceplan Berlin, described the campaign's intent in terms of emotional surprise. As published in Horizont on 29 January 2024, Bohné stated that reaching audiences on this subject required "strong, surprising and innovative storytelling," positioning the AI-driven approach not as a technical experiment but as the only adequate response to the emotional stakes involved. The campaign's visual language reinforces this — powerful imagery that refuses the aesthetic of memorial culture and insists instead on the vocabulary of the contemporary. Production was handled by Serviceplan Make, maintaining the creative vision within a single integrated group and ensuring consistency between concept and execution across Germany's digital and media environments.
The campaign generated measurable traction immediately upon release in Germany. According to Horizont, the campaign film reached hundreds of thousands of views within two days of its 27 January 2024 launch, a rate of uptake that placed it among the most rapidly distributed German public service films of the period. Prominent disability rights activist Raul Krauthausen shared the film, extending its reach into audiences beyond those who would typically engage with institutional antisemitism campaigns, as reported by Horizont.
Horizont readers voted #StopRepeatingStories into first place in the publication's February 2024 "Kreation des Monats" reader poll, capturing 57.3% of votes and earning the designation of a "moving AI campaign," according to Horizont. That result reflected not only professional recognition within the German advertising industry but audience engagement from readers who actively chose to cast a vote in its favour.
The campaign received a Digital Award 2024 in May 2024, per the Zentralrat der Juden's 2024 report, and was shortlisted in the 2024 Cresta Awards with Serviceplan Germany and Plan.Net Germany listed as entrant companies, according to the Cresta Awards. The campaign was also included in the 2024 Best of Content Marketing shortlist, per records documented on LinkedIn. These recognitions span industry, trade press, and client reporting, providing a consistent picture of a campaign that performed above expectation across every dimension it could be measured against. Its Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100 reflects strong strategic execution and creative clarity, with room for broader geographic distribution and measurable behavioural outcomes to lift the overall assessment further.
#StopRepeatingStories is a 2024 public service campaign created by Serviceplan Berlin for the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland. It uses AI to construct a documentary-style narrative that connects the rise of antisemitic crimes in Germany since October 2023 to historical patterns of persecution, launching on Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January 2024.
The campaign responded to 2,249 antisemitic crimes recorded in Germany since 7 October 2023. Federal Government Commissioner Felix Klein presented that figure at the Federal Press Conference on 25 January 2024, according to the Zentralrat der Juden. The launch on Holocaust Remembrance Day was a deliberate strategic choice to link past and present.
Serviceplan Berlin used AI to build Lea, a fictional character whose experiences of everyday antisemitism in Germany mirror documented patterns of real incidents. The AI-driven approach allowed the campaign to place antisemitism firmly in the present rather than relying on archival imagery, making the threat feel immediate and recognisable to contemporary German audiences.
#StopRepeatingStories was shortlisted at the 2024 Cresta Awards, according to the Cresta Awards, and received a Digital Award 2024 per the Zentralrat der Juden's 2024 report. Horizont readers also voted it February 2024 Kreation des Monats with 57.3% of votes, according to Horizont, establishing it as one of Germany's most recognised public service campaigns of the year.
The #StopRepeatingStories campaign film reached hundreds of thousands of views within two days of its 27 January 2024 launch in Germany, according to Horizont. Prominent activist Raul Krauthausen shared the film, amplifying distribution beyond typical institutional campaign audiences and contributing to the rapid uptake reported by trade press.
Benjamin Wolff directed the #StopRepeatingStories film, with Felix Baermann serving as director of photography, according to credits documented by Ads of the World and house-of-communication.com. Production was handled by Serviceplan Make, keeping the entire project within the Serviceplan group and ensuring creative consistency between concept and final execution.
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