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Radical Berlin in 12 Cemeteries. Part 2 – Radical Artists

Second part of a series on graves of radicals in Berlin


17/11/2023

In a recent article, I listed six cemeteries in Berlin where you could find commemorations to important left-wing resistance. In this follow up article, here are six, well seven, further cemeteries where you can visit the graves of radical artists.

Max Liebermann (1847-1935)

Max Lieberman’s grave, Alter Jüdischer Friedhof, Prenzlauer Berg. Photo: Franz Richter, CC3.0

Max Liebermann was the son of a banking millionaire. He was a patriot, who volunteered for military service during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1. At the beginning of the First World War, he co-signed a statement by academic and artists denying German war crimes. During the war, he produced pro-war propaganda for the newspaper “Kriegzeit – Künstlerflugblätter.”

Justifying his position, he said: “At the beginning of the war you didn’t think twice about it. People were united in solidarity with their country. I know well that the socialists have a different view… I’ve never been a socialist, and you don’t become one anymore at my age. I received my entire upbringing here, and I spent my entire life in this house, which my parents already lived in. And the German fatherland also lives in my heart as an inviolable and immortal concept.”

At the same time, he was a Jew in a country where antisemitism was rife. He died in 1935, 2 years after General Hindenburg – whose portrait he painted in 1927 – offered Hitler the German Chancellorship. His daughter Käthe managed to escape the country. His wife Martha was not so lucky. She committed suicide in 1943, awaiting deportation to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp.

Was Liebermann a radical? He was certainly a radical artist, the leading German member of the Impressionist movement. His first exhibit, “Women Plucking Geese” was denounced for depicting people at work. One critic called him the “disciple of the ugly.” In 1898 he was part of a jury which tried to award a medal to Käthe Kollwitz for her etchings based on Gerhart Hauptmann’s “The Weavers”. They were prevented by German Emperor Wilhelm II who refused to honour a woman.

Both Max and Martha Liebermann are buried in the Jewish Cemetery at the bottom of Schönhauser Allee. Only 38 mourners signed the condolence book at his funeral. State dignitaries and officials stayed away – the only non-Jewish exceptions were Dr. Ferdinand Sauerbruch, another of Liebermann’s sitters, and Käthe Kollwitz.

Heinrich Zille (1858-1929)

Heinrich Zille’s grave, Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf. Photo: Z thomas, CC3.0

Heinrich Zille was not an activist, but after his death both the Socialist and the Communist Parties claimed him as one of their own. Zille’s viewpoint though may be best summed up by his biographer H Ostland: “He did not believe in fair words, propaganda, talk and speeches. He was in favour of action. Which in his case meant his own work”. Although he occasionally published in the socialist press, most of his works were first published by liberals.

Zille grew up in poverty, and when he started to gain a living as an artist, he sketched what he knew – Berlin’s Mietskasernen (tenement slums), and in particular working class women and their children. Unlike some artists, who painted portraits of well-paying noblemen (and the occasional noblewoman), Zille drew the poor. His most important collections include “Mein Milljöh” (my milieu) and Kinder “der Straße” (street kids).

Zille’s satire was not confrontative, or explicitly political. In contrast to more active artists like his friend and contemporary Käthe Kollwitz. This does not mean that he was politically neutral. The caption for his picture ‘Geburtenrückgang’ reads “I’ve got six children in the cemetery, isn’t that some effort for the Fatherland?” But he preferred to draw people at home rather than working in factories, showing individual suffering much more than communal resistance.

Zille’s art was the product of his times –  which included the First World War, which he opposed, and the Spartacus uprising. He died in 1929, 4 years before Hitler became German Chancellor. The Nazis tried first to denounce Zille as a “socialist public pest”, then, when he proved too popular, argued that he depicted the old degenerate world which they had replaced.

Zille was a fellow traveller – a pacifist and a socialist of sorts. He was far more interested in working people than in the riches of power. Socialist author Kurt Tucholsky called him “Berlin’s best”. He was one of us. He is buried in the Südwestkirchhof in Stahnsdorf on the edge of Berlin. You can still see many of his pictures in the Zille museum in the Nikolaiviertel near Alexanderplatz.

George Grosz (1893-1959)

George Grosz’s grave, Friedhof Heerstraße. Photo: Phaeton1, CC3.0

In contrast to Liebermann and Zille, George Grosz was much more politically committed. In 1916, in the middle of the First World War, Grosz and his friend Helmut Herzfeld changed their names to challenge the dominant mood of German nationalism. Grosz changed his first name from Georg to George, while Herzfeld became John Heartfield, and was to pioneer the art of photomontage during the Weimar era.

As war led to the November Revolution, Grosz joined Rosa Luxemburg’s Spartacist League at the end of 1918. He was arrested during the Spartakus uprising the following year. His was also artistically radical. He was a founder of the Berlin Dada movement, and his paintings and sketches, full of prostitutes, drunkards and corrupt businessmen, showed the seedy underbelly of Weimar Germany. Many of his pictures featured men who had been crippled in the war.

In June 1932, with Hitler’s power seizure imminent, Grosz fled to the USA. He felt liberated by his new environment, saying: “The air in Manhattan had something inexplicably exciting about it, something that spurred my work onwards … I was filled with light and colours and joy”. He changed his artistic style, concentrating on landscapes, nudes and watercolours. It may be a cliché, but most of Grosz’s best works were made when he was less content.

In the USA, he also seems to have softened his politics. He took US citizenship in 1938 and was unwilling to criticize the country which offered him a sanctuary from Nazism. In his autobiography, written in 1946, he rejected his youthful radicalism, saying “I made speeches, not really from conviction but rather because there were people standing round all day long arguing and my previous experiences had not taught me any better.”.

In 1959, a few weeks after he had returned to Berlin, Grosz died after falling down a flight of steps while drunk. He is buried in the Friedhof Heerstraße opposite the Olympiastadion. Whatever he wrote in his later years, for a while, he was both a great artist and an influential political figure.

Berthold Brecht (1898-1956)

Berthold Brecht’s grave, Dorotheenstad Friedhof. Photo: Kiko2000, CC3.0.

Berthold Brecht is one of the twentieth Century’s most important playwrights and poets, the lyricist for a British Number One record (Bobby Darin’s Mack the Knife) and a Hollywood scriptwriter. He was also a lifelong Communist and a member of the group who were to become the Hollywood Ten.

Brecht’s breakthrough came with the “Threepenny Opera” – the “play with music” which he co-wrote with Kurt Weill in 1928. In 1933, he fled Nazi Germany, first to Sweden, later to the USA where he wrote the script to Fritz Lang’s film Hangmen Also Die. Alongside his better known plays like “Mother Courage and her Children”, and “The Life of Galileo”, he also attempted to rewrite the Communist Manifesto as a hexameter poem.

In 1947, Brecht was forced to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s kangaroo court aimed at purging Hollywood (and other US industries) of left wing radicals. Brecht answered all the court’s questions, while saying nothing, then immediately fled to Europe.

He moved to East Germany, which he saw as the “least bad” option, but was not uncritical of the DDR. When workers rose up East Berlin, Brecht wrote the poem “The Solution.” This famously ends with the lines: “Would it not in that case Be simpler for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?” He then put the poem in a drawer and it was not made public until after his death, 3 years later.

Brecht’s major contribution was probably to dramaturgy, with ideas like the Alienation Effect and Epic Theatre, he argued that theatre should confront its audience’s assumptions. In the 1930s he engaged in a number of debates with the Marxist critic Georg Lukács about the relative worth of Expressionism and so-called “Socialist Realism”.

Brecht is buried in the garden of the house which he lived in in East Berlin, which was already home to the grave of philosopher GWF Hegel. Other important left wing cultural figures have since been buried in the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery, including the photomontage artist John Heartfield, philosopher Herbert Marcuse and dissident author Christa Wolf.

Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

Marlene Dietrich’s grave, Friedhof Friedenau. Photo: Lienhard Schulz, CC3.0.

Marlene Dietrich spent Weimar Germany boxing and enjoying Berlin’s gay clubs. She became a star after her performance in “The Blue Angel” in 1930. It was her twentieth film, but the first one with sound. In the film – released in both German and English – Dietrich plays a sensuous cabaret singer who features in smutty postcards. It is said that Hitler destroyed all copies of the film, apart from one which he kept for himself.

After the success of the Blue Angel, Dietrich moved to the USA. In her first Hollywood film, Morocco, she wore a tuxedo and top hat, and kissed a woman on the lips. She refused to work in Nazi Germany, although the Nazis approached her and offered to make her the “pretty face” of the Third Reich. In 1937 she was approached once more and asked to star in Nazi propaganda films. She refused again, and later renounced her German citizenship.

In the 1930s she set up a fund with director Billy Wilder to help Jews escape Germany. The Nazi paper “Der Sturmer” denounced her, saying that “the film Jews of Hollywood” had made her “un-German”. After the war, when she learned that her sister had run a cinema which was frequented by guards from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, she disowned her sister (while allegedly making sure that she didn’t starve).

Dietrich did not just offend the German government. In 1933, she was told that she would be arrested if she wore trousers in Paris (women wearing trousers was only officially legalised in France 10 years ago, fact fans). A couple of years ago, a picture of her supposedly being arrested went viral, although the picture is just of her getting off a train, and the arrest never happened.

Dietrich is buried in the Friedhof Friedenau, the so-called “artist’s cemetery” in Tempelhof-Schöneberg. She was an anti-fascist, a bisexual and a strong woman at a time when women were supposed to keep quiet and know their place. After attacks on her grave, her grandson proudly announced: “She’s still fighting”.

Rio Reiser (1950-1996)

Rio Reiser’s grave, Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof. Photo: PHFoto, CC3.0

In 1970, Rio Reiser helped form the band ‘Ton Steine Scherben’ (TSS), which played squats and demonstrations while becoming remarkably successful. In the 1970s alone, TSS sold 300,000 albums, despite their refusal to advertise and radio stations’ reluctance to give them airplay. Their first gig was at the Festival der Liebe which also featured Jimi Hendrix. Their performance ended with the stage going up in flames.

Unlike most of their German contemporaries, TSS played songs in German, because they wanted to connect with German workers. Reiser once said that the band moved to Kreuzberg as they heard that young proletarians lived there. They released their own fanzine, “Guten Morgen”, which covered women’s and gay liberation, Black Power and the RAF’s guerrilla struggle in West Germany.

TSS’s first single “Mach kaputt was Euch kaputt macht” (Destroy what destroys you) was a song that Reiser had written in the 1960s for Hoffmans Comic Theater, an agit-prop group which toured schools. Other songs like the Rauch-Haus-Lied came out of his active involvement in the squatters’ movement. Following the police murder of activist Georg von Rauch, TSS played at a teach-in, which resulted in the occupation of the Bethanien buildings in Mariannenplatz,

Like Rudi Dutschke, Reiser was a practising Christian. He told his friends that he was gay in 1970, although he did not come out publicly until the 1980s. He was slightly suspicious of the student movement, which he found “too much like school”. Nonetheless he was an active member of the movement which developed after 1968. In 1970, the band was expelled from Switzerland after a concert in Basel turned into a political demonstration.

In 1975, the band moved from their commune in Berlin to a farm in Schleswig-Holstein. Reiser died in 1996 and was buried on the farm. In 2011, after the farm was sold, his grave was moved to the Alter St. Matthäus Kirchhof. Reiser now lies close to the Brothers Grimm. His memory lives on. A square in Kreuzberg was recently named after him, and if you go to a party organised by Berliners of a certain age, the evening is unlikely to end before you’ve all sung along to old TSS songs.

The crucial role of non-Germans in the Palestinian movement

Internationals can build a strong and vibrant campaign for Gaza here in Germany


15/11/2023

In this article I want to argue two things. Firstly, that internationals in Germany, and particularly in Berlin, are highly motivated to take to the streets for Palestine, perhaps more so than their counterparts in other European countries. Secondly, that it is precisely these people who can help break the logjam of passivity which has paralysed the German Left with regards to the situation in Palestine.

I will start with three anecdotes from recent weeks.

Mid-October, I was invited to speak to a group of Spaniards about what we internationals can do to support the Palestinians and oppose the ongoing Israeli bombardment. I was expecting only a handful of people so was pleasantly surprised to see 20 people there. Most of them had the same question: “We want to take action, but all the demos are banned and the German Left don’t even want to talk about Palestine. What can we do?”

Since then, the demo ban has been lifted, largely as a result of the number of people who were prepared to defy the ban and take to the streets. Yet, even now, although individual Biodeutscher (essentially white Germans) and small organisations are demonstrating, the presence of the organised German Left is still relatively small. On 4th November, most of my LINKE branch in Wedding marched for Palestine; however, they remain in the minority.

One of the decisions we took at my meeting with the Spaniards was to launch an open letter from international activists to the German Left. We are currently looking for international organisations based in Germany to join the first signatories. For more details, send a mail to solidaritypalestineberlin@gmail.com.

Two weeks later, the Berlin LINKE Internationals, a group of whom I am one of the speakers, held our monthly organising meeting. The subject was Palestine and the German Left. Instead of the usual 5 attendees, 35 people took part in a very productive meeting out of which we made several concrete suggestions for supporting the Palestinian cause. You can see some of these suggestions at the foot of the article.

Finally, just one day later, I was interpreting a meeting on Palestine by the new initiative Sozialismus von unten (Socialism from Below). We set up a small number of chairs for “whisper translation” to support participants who do not speak German fluently. By the time the meeting was ready to start, there were 20 of us.

During the meeting, there were a number of contributions from the floor by non-Germans who were not in our group. Eighteen people left their e-mail addresses for networking and to learn about future activities and events.

The role of internationals

I’ve lived in Germany for nearly 30 years now. In this time, I have seen a radical shift in the political engagement for Palestine – both by Germans and by internationals. While it’s easy to be frustrated when 800,000 march in London while there are only tens of thousands in Berlin, things are a lot better now than they’ve been in a long time. For decades, demonstrations have been small and predominantly attended by Palestinians or those with close ties to the region.

In 2021, we experienced an important shift. On the anniversary of the Nakba, Palästina Spricht organised a demonstration which was attended by 15,000 people. The demo was so successful that the following year, the Berlin local council and police banned all demonstrations around Nakba day.

Why did this demonstration gain such traction? There are a number of reasons:

Firstly, Palästina Spricht arose from a new generation of activists. Previously demonstrations had been called by older Palestinian community leaders. They invited the German Left to attend their demos, but their sphere of influence lay mainly in the Arab communities.

Palästina Spricht, in contrast, had their roots in the international anti-capitalist movement, and made a concerted attempt to involve international activists. Meetings were held in English, not Arabic (and also not German, as the initial wave of support came from people who were born outside Germany). This meant not only that 15,000 demonstrated, but also that the people marching were much more diverse than at previous demos.

A second factor was Black Lives Matter. 6 June 2020 saw Berlin’s first large post-Covid demonstration, when 15,000 marched in protest against both the police murder of George Floyd and institutional racism in Germany. The demonstration was organised and led by Black Germans and internationals – people who felt much less conflicted about the sins of their grandparents than white Germans.

When BLM started speaking out on Palestinian rights on an international level, the German Left was forced to listen. They didn’t become strong advocates of the Palestinian cause overnight, but BLM’s support for Palestine radically shifted the terms of debate. Many people who attended the BLM demo – both Black and white – were also at the Nakba Day demo less than a year later.

The international queer community has also played a huge part in Palestine solidarity. Internationalist Queer Pride has attracted thousands of people in recent years with a strong and explicit show of support for Palestine. Berlin Queers Against Racism and Colonialism (QuARC) is a Berlin-based umbrella group for queers* committed to anti-racist and anti-colonial politics. Drag for Palestine is a new group that has started to call for a boycott of racist anti-Deutsch clubs and cultural venues. They have an open letter targeting Schwuz.

Another factor was demographic changes in Berlin itself. I have often quoted the statistic that a quarter of Berliners do not have a German passport, but something else is also happening. People are staying here longer. Ten years ago, many internationals in Berlin were fleeing the economic devastation wreaked on Southern Europe. They planned to stay in Germany short-term before returning to their home countries when the economy got better.

But these economies did not improve. People stayed. Many got permanent jobs and started families. These longer term residents learned German and began engaging with German politics. When we set up the LINKE Internationals 10 years ago, we communicated in English as a necessity. Now many of our members are fluent German speakers and active in German campaigns, including for Palestine solidarity.

The final factor that I want to talk about here is subjective –  a rebellious response to suppression. When another leftist tells you that Germans can’t discuss Israel and Palestine, when the left’s parliamentary party, die LINKE, joins the CDU in organising a demonstration for Israel, when a left-wing theatre un-invites Jeremy Corbyn from a meeting on the EU because of his support for Palestine, you are driven to either despair or more militancy. Internationals in Germany are not just protesting to change conditions in Gaza, we also want to change the conditions in here.

Germany, we need to talk.

So what can we do?

To look at my earlier statistic through a different lens, three quarters of those living in Berlin do have a German passport. To build a mass campaign for Gaza, we also need their participation.

Most internationals are BIPoC people from the Global South, who are – quite rightly – leading the fight against colonialism. It is no coincidence that some of the demonstrations in Berlin have been organised by Global South United, an alliance led by anti-imperialist migrant and BIPOC groups.

But there is also a role for white Europeans and North Americans. To put it crudely, many Germans – including anti-racists – are reluctant to take part in a demonstration where most participants are Palestinians and the chants are in Arabic. The simple presence of white faces acts as a bridge which helps Germans join the demo despite their prejudices.

Internationals are used to a more sophisticated level of discussion about Palestine than we experience in Germany. We are much more acquainted with the arguments which we need to build a campaign for Gaza. While it’s great to spend some time in our international bubble, we also make an effort to speak to Germans and explain why Germany is politically failing in its implicit and explicit support for an apartheid régime.

In the face of the initial Israeli attacks after October 7th, and the refusal of many Germans to even consider the suffering of Palestinians, many of us felt alone and isolated from mainstream opinion. This is why it’s important that we network and that we organise. The international community in Berlin has the potential to be a significant political player. Let’s come together and turn this dream into a reality.

Together we are strong.

Concrete suggestions

At the beginning of this article, I mentioned a list of suggestions made by the Berlin LINKE Internationals. If you have any other ideas, please contact us at lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de.

Here are our suggestions so far:

  • To stay informed of demos and other events, we recommend that you subscribe to The Left Berlin Newsletter and regularly visit the website’s Events page. The website also contains excellent coverage in English on the Palestine movement in Germany and beyond. You can also find some useful information in English on pages like those of Palästina Spricht and the Jüdische Stimme.
  • A group of Spanish activists in Berlin have written an open letter to the German Left on Palestine. Before they publish the letter, they are looking for first signatories, particularly international organisations based in Berlin or Germany. If you are a member of such an organisation or can help find signatories, you can contact them at solidaritypalestineberlin@gmail.com.
  • We have set up a group on Signal for internationals to exchange information on Palestine events, and to organise leafletting and stickering actions. Please contact us if you want to be added to this group.
  • We are planning a series of film screenings and fundraisers on Palestine. The first one was on Sunday, 12th November. Sixty people attended and we raised over €400 for activities for Palestine in Germany.
  • The LINKE Internationals have set up a reading group on Palestine. The first meeting oversubscribed within a couple of days. Further meetings are planned, and will be advertised in The Left Berlin Newsletter and the LINKE Internationals Telegram group (linked under Contact us, below).
  • If you are interested in writing about Palestine, you can contact The Left Berlin editorial board on team@theleftberlin.com
  • There is a whole number of other individual events which you can find on The Left Berlin Events page.

If you have any other ideas, please contact us at the addresses below. We would love to see you at our next meeting on 4th December in Schierker Straße 26. As well as continuing our debate about our relationship with Die LINKE, we will be planning more events, discussions and debates.

Contact us

Many thanks to Andrei Belibou, Kate Cahoon, Rowan Gaudet, Molly Hill, Ramsy Kilani, and Annie Musgrove – all Berliners from a range of different countires, who gave valuable feedback on an earlier version of this article

Macron, Antisemitism and the Pro-Palestine Movement

Last Sunday 12th November, leaders of Macron’s governing party in France marched alongside fascists on a mass demonstration in Paris, pretending to oppose rising antisemitism, but in fact aiming at crippling the pro Palestine movement


14/11/2023

France has the biggest Jewish population in Europe – around half a million people – and prejudice against Jews is a very real thing here. Jean-Marie Le Pen built his National Front organization, with its fascist core, while insisting that the ovens of Auschwitz were “a detail of history” and while repeatedly making “jokes” implying he wanted the same fate to befall Jewish personalities who opposed him. Jordan Bardella, presently head of this organization (now called National Rally and with 88 Members of Parliament), insisted this week that Jean-Marie Le Pen was not antisemitic, and promised his party would march alongside Macron’s ministers against antisemitism, which he insists is to be blamed on French Muslims and left-wing activists.

Antisemitism in France

Violent antisemitism in France mostly comes from the far right, but not only. There have been a number of racist murders of Jews over the last twenty years, including the terrorist attack in 2014 on a kosher supermarket, which left four dead. In addition, polls show that up to a third of the population hold prejudices such as “Jews have too much power in the business world”.

Police figures say that there have been 1159 antisemitic offences (from insults to assaults) committed in France in the last month or so. Authorities give very few details. Some of these will be from the far right (swastikas were daubed on walls in the Southern town of Nice, while anti-Jewish and white power slogans were seen in Fresnes in the Paris suburbs). Some are certainly from people stupidly blaming Jews in general for Israel’s massacres, and some from reports to the police of pro-Palestine activity which is not in fact antisemitic at all. Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior has already declared that waving a Palestinian flag is an act of antisemitism, whilst even the respected newspaper Le Monde is saying that the slogan “From the river to the sea” is probably antisemitic!

It suits Macron to claim that the rise of antisemitic attacks, and not his government’s support for killing Gaza’s children, is the most important news story of the day. And there are regular attempts by Macron and other right wingers to blame French Arabs for antisemitism. This has obviously been made easier by the Jihadist anti-Jewish terrorist attacks, which in fact horrified French people of North African origin just like they horrified everyone else.

Unsurprisingly, when the government of Israel, and the French mass media, declare every day of the year that everything Israel does is in the name of all Jews everywhere, there are those who are foolish enough to believe them, and this can push uninformed people into antisemitic ideas. But France had no need of Arab immigration to see a strong current of antisemitic prejudice in the country. Antisemitism goes far back in French history, and the active involvement of the French state during the Second world war in the massacre of Jews turned a hateful trend into a murderous one. Even General de Gaulle could cheerfully express his antisemitism, declaring in the 1960s that the Jews “had always been a people of the elite, sure of itself and dominating”.

Today, the French state is cynically using the existence of antisemitism to strengthen support for Israel. At the same time Macron is welcoming fascist currents further into mainstream politics. For many right wingers, this is the first step to what they hope will be a future government alliance between right and far right.

Repression

It was in 2019 that Macron first declared that “antizionism is one of the modern forms of antisemitism”. The Macron government is determined today to smear the Palestine solidarity campaign as anti-Jewish, despite the large numbers of Jews active in it. Several demonstrations in Paris were banned, with the Paris police chief declaring that the danger of antisemitic slogans was too high. Once pro Palestine sentiment got even stronger, and the banned demonstrations had taken place anyway, the government authorized protests the following week. The result was huge demonstrations, without any antisemitic slogans (despite the right-wing press scouring the streets looking for them).

The repression continues though. The theatrical deportation of a Palestinian speaker, Mariam Abudaqa, is being organized. Activists putting up posters reading “stop the genocide” were arrested and kept in detention overnight last week. Then, in early November, some of Macron’s team came up with a cunning new plan: to have a big march, from the National Assembly to the Senate “against rising antisemitism”. The media jumped on the opportunity to denounce any organization not calling to join the march as Jew-haters.

The initial call to demonstrate around the country on Sunday 11 November, which was published by Macron’s team included the demand that Israeli hostages be freed, but said nothing about the massacres in Gaza. It claimed that “Islamists” were the main culprits carrying out attacks on Jews in France, but said nothing about islamophobia. The far-right organization “National Rally” unsurprisingly called at once its supporters to join the demonstration. And all the most prominent fascists in the country were suddenly moved to pour out their well-known empathy for Jewish people. Eric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella all marched in Paris on Sunday, scarcely able to believe the huge favour Macron’s team were doing for them by including them in this initiative.

The Left was under huge pressure to join the march in Paris. The Socialist Party, Communist Party and the Greens called to march but insisted there should be a “Republican barrier” to make sure that the far right would march separately (in fact an entirely impracticable proposal). The biggest radical Left organization, the France Insoumise (“France in Revolt”) decided not to join the demonstration.  “Fighting against antisemitism and all forms of racism is not possible if marching alongside a party whose origins are in collaboration with the nazis”, the FI press release explained. Jean-Luc Mélenchon went even further declaring that it would be “a meeting point for those who support the massacre in Gaza”. The combative trade union confederation, the CGT (who recently invited the Palestinian ambassador to address their national council), rejected Macron’s march and called instead to join a long-planned weekday rally against antisemitism which coincided with the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Fortunately, on Sunday, large numbers of people understood the cynical manipulation. Only 7,000 joined the demonstration in Marseille, only 3,000 in Bordeaux, Lyon and Nice. In Paris, though, around a hundred thousand marched. No doubt most present had no intention of helping the fascists rehabilitate themselves, and the supporters of Israel’s massacres did not have the confidence to carry Israeli flags. The fascist contingent was disrupted briefly by a few dozen members of the Left Jewish group Golem, waving placards “We can see you, antisemites!”

It is no surprise that this collaboration with the fascists in smart suits of National Rally comes from a Macron government which last year announced the banning of the local antifascist grouping in Lyon, known under the acronym GALE, on the grounds that the group supported violent acts “against far-right activists and their property”, at the same time as it banned the CRI, a legal aid organization for victims of islamophobia.

Macron’s team aims at killing two birds with one stone – attacking the pro-Palestine movement and preparing the ground for future alliances with fascists. The demonstrations of the  Palestine solidarity movement on 11 November, far more dynamic, is the sign that another option is possible, as long as most left activists do not fall into Macron’s carefully laid traps.

“Never Again is Now”

Speech by the chair of the Jüdische Stimme on the occasion of their twentieth anniversary


13/11/2023

Dear guests,

Dear friends,

Dear members,

We are currently witnessing a genocide. In Gaza, 9,500 people have been killed by Israeli bombs, 4,000 of them children. The narrow enclave has been turned into a moon landscape and there is no refuge for the 2.3 million inhabitants – whether in schools, hospitals, mosques or churches. The justification used is the massacre by militias from Gaza who on 7th October attacked several villages in the South of Israel. In their reactions, Israelis politicians have clearly said that they wanted to destroy Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the Biblical figure of Amalek, the permanent enemy, who could only be disarmed by total destruction. And concrete plans of the Israeli government to displace the whole population of Gaza to Egypt have come to light.

By linking the discourse on migration with antisemitism, real fears felt by Jews were instrumentalised… an international conference on the questions of Germany’s culture of remembrance was cancelled by the Federal Agency for Civic Education. Critical figures in the political and cultural arena are being sacked or excluded. Tendencies which have been there for years have intensified.

If you have come to this meeting and know something about the work of the Jüdische Stimme, of course you know that this story did not begin on 7th October. You know that the blockade of the Gaza strip has made a normal life there impossible for 16 years. You know that in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it’s not just that even more settlements are being built, but also that settlers and the army are using even more everyday violence and eviction attempts up to and including pogroms against Palestinians. You know that within the official Israeli State territory, Palestinian citizens are living in even more danger and fear, on top of the legally prescribed and informal discrimination. You know that a life in peace with full rights is denied to millions more in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. You also know that most people in the large Palestinian diaspora, which is strongly represented in Germany and in Berlin, are not allowed to return to Palestine. And you know that all this goes back to the Nakba, the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from the end of 1947, which has never stopped, is being continued through the current genocide, and is barely recognised in the German public sphere.

How has the German public sphere reacted to the events of recent weeks? In Germany, many demonstrations were banned days before they were supposed to happen, above all here in Berlin, where the police acted with shocking brutality and implemented bans beyond the law. In the media the spectre of hordes of bloodthirsty Arabs and Muslims was evoked, who above all were portrayed as a danger to Jews, and it would be best if all were deported. Even the so-called social democrat Olaf Scholz was not ashamed to use such rhetoric. Demonstrations for Palestine and Gaza were often stamped as being “pro-Hamas”, and those that weren’t were alleged to contain mainly antisemitic tendencies. By linking the discourse on migration with antisemitism, real fears felt by Jews were instrumentalised – also by figures of the Jewish mainstream like Josef Schuster, president of the central council of Jews, who described the protesting and mourning people as “barbarians”. Space for discussion is becoming increasingly narrower: an international conference on the questions of Germany’s culture of remembrance was cancelled by the Federal Agency for Civic Education. Critical figures in the political and cultural arena are being sacked or excluded. Tendencies which have been there for years have intensified.

As we send a message that solidarity with Palestine does not contradict Judaism, and that Israel does not speak for all Jews, we use an authority of speaking which is not available to our Palestinian partners and friends or the people in Palestine.

Months ago, when we conceived the plan to organise an anniversary celebration, we asked ourselves whether this would be even appropriate – this is even more the case now. We asked ourselves whether it was defensible to speak about ourselves and our history for a whole evening, in light of the suffering and the thousands of dead and wounded, instead of concentrating on the people in Palestine. One member said, we could celebrate when our organisation is no longer needed. And yes, if there were no more sickness or injuries, we would not need any doctors or hospitals.

Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and one of the few survivors once said: “to be a Jew means always to be with the oppressed, never with the oppressors”. I consider that in a way to be our guiding principle, although there are aspects which make our position more complicated. A significant part of our original strategy is that as Jews we stand by the Palestinians, so that the supposed contradiction between both these things, and the constantly present charge of antisemitism is refuted by our solidarity.

What does this mean for our role? As we send a message that solidarity with Palestine does not contradict Judaism, and that Israel does not speak for all Jews, we use an authority of speaking which is not available to our Palestinian partners and friends or the people in Palestine.

Our task must not just be to give a kosher stamp to other people, which shamefully is expected by the majority of society, nor to say “listen to us, we are Jews”. Our task must be to work with other groups in alliances, and to strengthen them so that they do not need this stamp.

A few months ago, I was with a Palestinian friend at a meeting with the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, who for years has been one of the most important writers and speakers around the subject of Palestine, among other things through his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. The talk was eloquent and incisive, full of facts without being too academic. My friend complained: “when an Israeli Jew says that, everybody listens. But when we say it, we’re anti-Semites.” And he is right. Although some people also call us antisemitic, and we are ostracized or ignored by the Jewish mainstream, we still get more of a hearing than the Palestinians. Not every demonstration that is registered by us is forbidden.

We use this small advantage, as do groups in other countries, like Jewish Voice for Peace in the USA or the international umbrella organisation European Jews for a Just Peace, so that our message is heard by those who do not want to hear Palestinian voices. We use our privilege – although at the same time we consolidate it. Our task must not just be to give a kosher stamp to other people, which shamefully is expected by the majority of society, nor to say “listen to us, we are Jews”. Our task must be to work with other groups in alliances, and to strengthen them so that they do not need this stamp. So that no-one even needs to argue that something is acceptable because Jews have signed off on it.

When I see how the genocide of the Roma and Sinti is barely mentioned – after it was first officially recognised in 1982, nearly 40 years after it happened – and that large parts of the German society is just not able to link the different forms of racism, including antisemitism, I am overcome with rage and sorrow. When I see how an inflated discourse about “Gender Gaga” leads to AfD posters on which the rainbow flag is combined with a triangle which looks like that used on a concentration camp uniform, then I have fear for all my queer friends and for my trans son. And when I see how little it costs to confront white conservative politicians with their past and perhaps present Nazi sympathies, that I know that the fight against antisemitism is a farce and that Germany was never de-Nazified. In a society where Fascists have been standing at over 20% in the polls for months, all minorities are threatened. Of course, Palestine remains our focus, as this movement is so urgently required, and faces such hostility. And because the German discourse of remembrance is used so insidiously against them, because the wrong lessons are mercilessly taken from the Holocaust. But our engagement in Palestine stands together with an engagement in many areas which are all connected.

I want to say something else about us, about our organisation, and about what we can maybe be. The last weeks have burdened us all in a way, meaning that that again and again we have reached our limits – not just as activists, but also our humanity and our psyche. And we are encouraged that we have experienced such solidarity and appreciation which has overwhelmed me. In a normal year, we receive a handful of applications to join. In the last three weeks, they were sometimes coming nearly every day. And what I always here from people who want to join us is that they feel frustrated and powerless, at the same time as suffering the German reason of state and the limitation within Jewish spaces. They hope that by joining – whether or not they really want to be active or just make a connection – they can contribute something so that they no longer feel alone.

If we can offer Jews a place where they have a connection to the larger movement, then this is also a function of a work which ultimately strengthens the fight for justice for Palestine and the solidarity with other groups. From my own experience, I can say that joining paved the way towards me becoming a committed activist, and allowed me to identify with my Judaism without inner conflict. We, and above all our Palestinian companions, will be time and again demonised and defamed, but together we are strong, and can help not just ourselves but also other people. Let us insist on this, however dark it becomes. It is a time when the masks drop and we see who stands for humanity, and who does not. “Never again” is now.

This speech was given in German at an event organised by the Jüdische Stimme at oyoun cultural centre on 4th November 2023. Translation: Phil Butland. Reproduced with permission.

Photo Gallery: Demonstrations in Berlin for Gaza, 11 November 2023

Oranienplatz to Mehringdamm


12/11/2023

Photos: Phil Butland, Paul Grasse, Regina Sternal, Trad (@illustradtion)

Because of the current level of repression in Berlin against Palestinians and their supporters, most faces have been pixellated.