2023-11-08 19:50:25
“I don’t understand why people haven’t learned their lesson. I never thought, after the Holocaustthat something similar could happen,” he said this Wednesday Margot Friedländer, 102 years old and survivor of Nazism. She was the guest of honor German President Franz Walter Steinmeierto the event in memory of the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht or beginning of the Nazi pogroms. “We suffer situations that They remind me of Islamophobia after the September 11 attacks (2001)”, noted Ender Cetin, a Berlin imam who, together with Rabbi Elias Drays, directs the Meet2Recpect project, promoter of the dialogue between muslims and jews. “The child who is now prohibited from wearing the Palestinian scarf may be the teenager who will turn his back on Germany in the morning, because he feels excluded from its society,” warned Jouanna Hassoun, a Palestinian raised in Berlin who with her Israeli colleague Shai Hoffmann is trying to promote the tolerance at school.
Steinmeier had called them to a round table at Bellevue Palace to reflect on November 9, 1938. Five years after the arrival of Adolf Hitler to power, thousands of synagogues burned that night throughout the country and 7,500 Jewish businesses were devastated. The next day they were The first 30,000 Jews were deported to Nazi death camps.. Until the capitulation of the Third Reich, it is estimated that six million Jews were murdered.
Examples of coexistence
Freidländer was the guest of honor. She symbolizes reconciliation with today’s Germany and since she returned to her native Berlin, now 88 years old, she visits schools and youth forums to spread her message. But this year’s round was not just a ritualized anniversary. It was subtitled “War in Near East. By a peaceful coexistence in Germany“The German president had invited representatives of that conciliatory spirit, such as the duo formed by the rabbi and the imam or the owners of the Berlin restaurant Kanaan, the Palestinian Jalil Dabit and the Israeli Oz Ben David, whose existence is anything but easy. “The air is hot. Emotions burn at any time“said Ben David.
Steinmeier warned in his initial speech about the “threatened” coexistence following the “barbaric attack by Hamas” on October 7. He recounted his astonishment at the fact that Jews once again felt unsafe in Germany while a antisemitism which, until now, has been reflected in flag burningpainted with the Star of David in some Jewish businesses or expressions of furious anti-Semitism in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. If in the first quarter of the year, the Interior figures recorded 379 anti-Semitic acts or attacks, in the third quarter they already rose to 540. The security forces have reinforced security devices in front of any representative building of that community, which after years of efforts currently have 100,000 members in the country.
The right to express pain or instrumentalization
The German president also recognized the right of the Palestinians to “express their pain” for the thousands of civilians killed in the Gaza Strip, which he described as “Hamas victims and hostages“. But he called do not allow yourself to be “instrumentalized” or “dragged” to calls for unauthorized demonstrations managed by Islamic fundamentalism.
It was a speech very similar to others that he has been giving these days, a reflection of Germany’s unconditional commitment to Israel’s right to defense, the fruit of its historical responsibility towards that country.
In the following round table, now without televised broadcast but with in-person access to the media, the scope of the double challenge was revealed, against anti-Semitism and against Islamophobia. All this, in a Germany where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) It is the second force in voting intention on a national scale. The guests at the round table had been selected as examples of coexistence at the antipodes of the radicalism present in mosques directed remotely by Islamic fundamentalism. Several of those present left on the table the reproaches of these private initiatives towards German institutions or the deficits accumulated in decades of not investing in integration policies.
An uncomfortable trial
In the midst of the alerts against anti-Semitism, the defamation trial against the Jewish singer and influencer is being held these days Gil Ofarimwho two years ago made a message go viral in which he claimed that he was prevented from entering a renowned hotel in Leipzig (eastern Germany) for wearing the David’s star to the neck. The accusation caused a great media stir; The employee was removed from his position and had to remain hidden for weeks because he felt threatened. The security camera recordings did not support Ofarin’s version, not even if he was wearing the Star of David and there are no eyewitnesses to support him.
The process opened with the two versions confronting each other: that of Ofarim, who insists on the anti-Semitic attack; and that of the employee, who portrays his alleged victim as a vociferous and excited customer who shouted at him and finally asked him to leave the premises.
On November 9, not only is the night of the Nazi pogroms remembered in Germany, but also another night, that of 1989, probably the most beautiful in the country’s recent history. It was the one of the the fall of the Berlin Wall. After decades of traumatic division, citizens of the east and west were able to cross that border without fear of dying in the attempt. The concrete wall was no longer impassable and the process of reunification which led to the signing of the Unity Treaty on October 3, 1990. The coincidence of both anniversaries, the darkest and the happiest, made it impossible to give the fall of the Wall the status of a national holiday.
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