“Haven’t we learned anything from the Holocaust?”
Here’s a question that, in Germany, might cost you a criminal charge and a fine of 1,500 Euro. That’s what happened to M., and yes: she is going to challenge the verdict.
Unbelievable, but true: asking whether Germany learned anything from the Holocaust can land you a criminal charge.
I had never met M. prior to our conversation. She is not one of the people frequenting Palestine events and groups. M. is simply a person with a heart who witnessed the mass murder of a people happening in front of our eyes, and understood that silence is not an option.
It was in the early days of the brutal Israeli assault on the people of Gaza, a genocide unfolding before our eyes and preceded by decades of colonization and military occupation, 15 years of suffocating blockade, and regular bombings and massacres.
M. wrote her words on two pieces of paper and went out to the street, all the way to the German Bundestag. One banner read in German “NO to the murder of so far 8,500 civilians in Gaza”, and the other “Haven’t we learned anything from the Holocaust?”
What motivated you to take action, I asked.
“I felt so many people died every day and the world was silent and I couldn’t do anything because I was just a little human with nothing to say. But, I said, – what we can do is go out in the world and confront the publicity with this, because we have a democracy, we have freedom of expression, and I had this strong will to go to the government and confront them with this. You teach us in schools that we need to learn about history. Half of my history class in Germany was about the Holocaust. I was so confused about why we don’t use our knowledge and what we learned from this history. That is what I wanted to ask them.”
Little did M. know that this simple and necessary question would land her a criminal charge. Yet, as many of us experienced on our own skin, when it comes to the lives of Palestinian people, democracy and freedom of expression easily lose all meaning in Germany.
This should concern each and every person living in Germany who believe they exist in a democracy – a belief that can be overturned the moment they leave their home with a watermelon, a kuffiya, or a simple banner.
The police stopped her fast, but apparently didn’t know what was wrong with the signs. They suspected something might be wrong as the word ‘Holocaust’ was mentioned. Meanwhile, people passing by were just as puzzled as M. as to why she was being questioned, and one even tried to intervene in her defense. Armed with walkie talkies, the police asked their colleagues and received a confirmation – indeed, there is a problem.
Intentional misunderstanding
The next thing was M. receiving a letter from the police accusing her of “Volksverhetzung”. This is a serious crime, understood in German criminal law as incitement to hatred of a people. Eventually, she had to defend herself against the charge of “belittling the crimes of the national-socialist [Nazi] regime”, by allegedly relativizing or belittling the Holocaust.
I also asked M. about her connection to what is happening in Gaza.
“I grew up with people from Palestine around me. I always had conversations with them and with other people trying to see all sides and I was always trying to understand what’s the problem. I occupied myself with the history, and with the current conditions. I understood this is not about a one or two-state solution and such, the crucial problem is the injustice, the apartheid, and it opened my mind and my eyes. Only when these crimes are approached, we might discuss solutions to keep peace in this region.”
Why and how did it become a potentially criminal question to ask in Germany? After all, what has Germany learned from its history is a valid question indeed, one that many of us have been asking, watching Germany extending Israel unconditional financial, military and diplomatic support, even as the International Court of Justice conducted a hearing on the crime of genocide.
I am convinced that too many people in Germany and state and judicial institutions object to this question, because they don’t truly want to hear the answer.
It seems that M’s powerful statement in court and a detailed defense by her attorney did not reach the ears of the judge. Both spelled out the main lesson from the Holocaust – respect for all human life and rights – in simplest and most compelling terms.
M. referred to the deep sense of responsibility that came from hearing from her own grandparents about the Nazi era. Her attorney recalled Holocaust survivors and their descendants calling for universal lessons from the Holocaust or appealing to their own history to explain their solidarity with the people in Gaza. Their genuine and heartfelt statement was met with a concrete wall.
It is clear that they weren’t simply misunderstood, on the contrary: they encountered a persistent, intentional and systemic refusal to understand. By law, when there are several plausible interpretations for an action of a defendant, the ruling should adhere to the interpretation that favours the defense. This was not followed.
Moral self-grandeur
Over a decade ago, I taught a course at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and one of my favorite texts to teach was Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams, published in 1962. Williams argued that the Atlantic slave trade did not end due to the moral triumph of the white man, as it was and still is believed, but by the changing economic interests of the British Empire.
His work got me seriously reflecting on the role of memory culture in colonial and neo-colonial societies, and the reconstitution of yesterday’s colonizer as today’s morally superior – ironically, part and parcel of colonial identity and ideology.
There is no doubt that Germany is married to its self-image as a highly moral post-war society that has come to terms with its bloody history. Even to the extent of serving as an example to other societies grappling with crimes of their past (light to the nations comes to mind).
What happens when Holocaust memory is used as a measure for high moral ground? It becomes a tool of moral supremacy for Germany and Germans. Same can – and must – be said for the famous “German guilt”, a manifestation of self-centered aspiration for morality.
Wallowing in “guilt” and moral self-grandeur is anything but genuine commitment to the victims and the survivors.
This is not to say that you won’t encounter in Germany a memory culture that actually centers the victims and survivors, and the universal lessons that should instruct us in this life. M. is one of them. I have met incredible activists that are learning from history, in ways that are genuine and humble; some are German, many are Palestinian, many are migrants from other parts of the world.
This is the kind of memory culture that does not start with the Holocaust but accounts for German colonialism and the crimes against Nama and Herero people in Namibia. That does not limit itself to unhealthy obsession with Jews, adopting us as a kind of “pet minority”, but equally honors all victims of the Nazi regime, including Roma and Sinti communities, homosexuals and other queers, people with disabilities, communists, sex workers, and others.
It is clear that Germany, as an establishment and as a mainstream of society, hasn’t learned from the Holocaust what it was supposed to learn, and here’s just a few examples, feel free to add your own:
Stop enabling genocide, do not allow dehumanization of a people and complete devaluation of their life. Speak up for what is right without fear for what the neighbors might say. Don’t be racist towards Jews – and the idea of a “Jewish state” and a “safe place” for Jews far away from Germany and Europe is inherently antisemitic. Don’t be racist towards Palestinians or anyone else. Understand Jews are ordinary humans who are capable of being victims as much as perpetrators, including of the most horrid crimes humanity has ever known.
The mirror of Nakba
As I write these lines on the eve of the Nakba Day, I recognize Germany’s entitlement to criminalize the commemoration of the Nakba, as evident in bans in recent years, directly related to its memory culture around the Holocaust and to its support for the genocide today, a continuation of the Nakba by many accounts.
The entitlement to decide for its primary and secondary victims whether and how we may remember and honor our own histories and ancestors. And yet, people’s memory is stronger than state violence. The unbearable pain and loss of these past months distorts, or perhaps sharpens, the way the past and the present intertwine: in reality, in thought and in feeling.
The black-and-white photos of the Nakba and the never-ending stream of full color images and videos of the people, young and old, elderly and children, dead, injured, starving or driven to despair. Unfamiliar to some of us, but familiar for many of our Palestinian comrades, friends and family.
What we all can and must learn from painful human histories of genocides, expulsions, and ethnic cleansing, is that there is never a justification to massacring tens of thousands of people, to bombing entire neighborhoods and towns, to burning people alive. No justification to decades of military occupation, blockade, and apartheid.
This shouldn’t be too complicated, right?
Yet, for the German establishment and parts of the public, any and all universal and human lessons from the Holocaust are systematically replaced by unconditional “support to Israel” as the state commits war crimes and starves two million people to death while speaking of a right to exist. Even in international law, people have rights; settler-colonial projects and states do not.
Of course, Germany’s foreign policy and its domestic police repression are not guided merely or even primarily by considerations of its self-perception. There are powerful geo-political and economic interests at play. But this is precisely when each and every one of us can make a difference, when people’s power is needed and when the ordinary people must speak up.
I believe M. put it in the best words possible.
“You don’t have to be someone who understands politics and I don’t think I understand politics well. But not to see the disproportionality in this war and keep saying Israel has the right to defend itself is just bullshit, it is beyond human thinking, human morality.”
