Marwa al-Sherbini’s murder in Dresden reflects the troubling rise in xenophobia in GermanyWhat a fine NYTimes article I just read: In Dresden, High Culture Meets the Bigotry of Marwa al-Sherbini’s Murder.

By now the horrific murder of pregnant Egyptian pharmacist Marwa al-Sherbini is generally well known.

She was stabbed 18 times in a Dresden courtroom, in front of her 3-year-old son, judges and other witnesses, reportedly by the man appealing a fine for having insulted Ms. Sherbini in a park. Identified by German authorities only as a 28-year-old Russian-born German named Alex W., he had called Ms. Sherbini an Islamist, a terrorist and a slut when she asked him to make room for her son on the playground swings. Ms. Sherbini wore a head scarf.

The killer also attacked Elwi Okaz, Ms. Sherbini’s husband and a genetic research scientist.

The focus of the article is not the details of the crime, but a contrast between the beauty of Dresden and the growing xenophobia among Germany’s young. A recent two-year government survey of 20,000 German teenagers classified one in seven as “highly xenophobic” and another 26.2 percent as “fairly xenophobic.”

Culture doesn’t ameliorate hatred. Jews marched to the gas chambers to the sounds of Wagner and Beethoven. The last paragraph of this article is the key point of my journal this week: What we can also do, though, is accept that while the arts won’t save us, we should save them anyway. Because the enemies of civilized society are always just outside the door.