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Month: August 2024

The News from Berlin and Germany, 28th August 2024

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany


28/08/2024

NEWS FROM BERLIN

General suspicion applies in Görli

Abdulaye Sow was falsely accused of drug dealing in Görlitzer Park in what his lawyer describes as clear racial profiling. On that day, just before going to the park, he withdrew 400 euros from an ATM – for which the newspaper ‘taz” has published the bank statement. He was then stopped by the police, who took his money and accused him of being a dealer. He was ‘shocked’ the police would accuse a man of being a dealer just because he was sitting near a drug hotspot and had money with him, even though there was no evidence of this. He has since announced that he has lodged a complaint with the police. Source: taz

Number of pupils in Berlin has risen again

Berlin’s schools record an increase in the number of pupils in the new school year. According to preliminary data from the education administration, around 404,000 pupils will be studying at general education schools after the end of the summer holidays, around 9,000 more than in the previous year. Also, the number of young people attending vocational schools has risen from 77,900, exceeding 78,000. The Senator for Education, Katharina Günther-Wünsch (CDU) has said that these figures are related to Berlin being ‘a hotspot for immigration’. There remains a shortage of hundreds of teachers. Günther-Wünsch is working with alternatives such as offering a long-term perspective for single-subject teachers. Source: rbb

A Russian restaurant in Berlin closes down after discrimination

Berlin is known for its diverse and lively gastronomy scene. However, many restaurants in Berlin are in crisis. Among them, a Russian gastronomic icon was forced to close recently. ‘Datscha’ was once a cult restaurant in Friedrichshain. You could eat Russian pancakes filled with quark, cream cheese and home-marinated salmon here. Co-founder Kristina Enke, a German-Ukrainian, has spoken out about the reasons for the closure, mentioning not only the increase on costs, but the prejudice experienced. There have been negative reviews on Google such as ‘Don’t eat there, the owner is Russian’. Source: Berlin-live

1. FC Union Berlin in search of suitable sponsors

The Bundesliga season begins for 1. FC Union Berlin on Saturday against 1. FSV Mainz 05. There, only the word ‘Berlin’ with the television tower in the background will be visible on the “Eisern”´s shirts. Missing critically the main sponsor. Such sponsorship deals are being considered carefully since there have been recent negative examples showing that a premature deal can be counterproductive. The most controversial sponsorship agreement this season was undoubtedly Borussia Dortmund’s deal with Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest defence contractor. Union´s president Dirk Zingler affirmed: ‘We wouldn’t have chosen Rheinmetall because Rheinmetall stands for something different than our club.’ Source: msn

 

NEWS FROM GERMANY

Terrorism and fascism: two sides of the same coin

After the deadly knife attack in Solingen, German politicians have reacted in typical fashion. The AfD has called for a ‘deportation offensive’, while CDU chairman Friedrich Merz insists: ‘It’s not knives that are the problem, but the people walking around with them. In most cases, these people are refugees.’ And Fabio De Masi from the ‘Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance’ joins in the chorus: ‘We have to talk about parallel societies and the large number of people who live with us without being subject to the right of asylum.’ One may ask on what basis these comments are made? What does the ‘Islamic State’, which claims responsibility for the attack, have to do with migration and asylum law? Source: nd-aktuell

Scholz vows speeding up deportations after Solingen

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) said irregular migration into Germany ‘must go down’ after the attack in Solingen. ‘This was terrorism, terrorism against us all,’ Scholz said during a visit to the city last Monday. Scholz also said his government would have to do ‘everything we can to ensure that those who cannot and should not stay here in Germany are repatriated and deported.’ An already heated debate about migration has become fiercer, with suggestions from the opposition of more control on Germany´s borders, or even stopping all migration. Experts say such suggestions are not feasible and are incompatible with German and European Union law. Source: bbc

Demonstrators against AfD prevent Björn Höcke from appearing in Jena

Thuringia’s leading AfD candidate Björn Höcke had to cancel an appearance in Jena due to a counter-demonstration. The original plan was for Höcke to appear at a public discussion in a district centre in Jena-Lobeda. According to the police, the manifestation had been registered, however, fewer people were originally expected. A broad alliance had called for the protests. The police stated that 2,000 people took part in the protests. Katharina König-Preuss (Left Party), a member of the Thuringian state parliament, had estimated the number of participants at around 3,000. She also described a sometimes harsh police operation against blockaders. The police were deployed there with pepper spray and batons. Source: Zeit

Foreign labour generates billions for eastern German states

Without foreigners, gross value added in eastern Germany would shrink: that is the conclusion of a new study by the Institute of German Economy (IW). ‘Foreign employees support the East German economy,’ says study author Wido Geis-Thöne, ’which makes it all the more important that the region remains cosmopolitan.’ According to the study, they mainly came from Poland and the Czech Republic, but also from countries such as India and Vietnam. However, eastern Germany does not have the best reputation when it comes to hospitality, the IW notes. ‘The AfD is working tirelessly on migrants,’ points out the institute. Source: rbb

“Netanyahu made me do it”

It’s myopic to suggest that fascist ideology has been ‘imported’ into Britain and could not possibly be home-grown


27/08/2024

The press and social media are awash with attempts to analyse far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson’s mass mobilisations over the last few months and the riots in the wake of the murder of three children in Southport. There’s a lot we don’t know about the perpetrators of the violence, but there’s also a lot we do know about the far-right and fascist ideologues who supported them.

What we should know from the history of the last century is that the rise of fascism is not easy to make sense of because its explanations for people’s problems, conflicts and fears relate to their real, everyday lives in shifting contexts. Nevertheless, some groups have an interest in treating fascism as though it is detached from “normal” life — a foreign import, like dragon’s teeth planted by outsiders, whose violent consequences we are left to reap.

In the current outbreak of violence, mainstream spokespeople for the state, like former MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, blame money, misinformation and the Russians. Supposedly dissident commentators, like David Miller and Lowkey, blame money, manipulation and the Israelis.

Although there are elements of truth in both of these theories — Tommy Robinson pockets large amounts of money from wherever he can get it, probably including both Israel and Russia — the suggestion that fascist ideology could not be home-grown is myopic. In the 1930s the British state claimed that fascism was a German import. Today it’s being variously attributed to Russia and Israel — but not, notably to all the other fascist movements and governments, including in Poland, Hungary, Italy, India and the United States, with which it is enmeshed.

Most longstanding anti-racists and anti-fascists reject these oversimplified explanations. Instead, they are looking closely at the events, assessing the similarities and differences between the current upsurge in the far right and earlier episodes in order to develop effective strategies for challenging it. They recognise that fascists focus on different targets at different times — Jews in the 1930s; African Caribbeans in the 1950s and ’60s; Asians in the 1970s and ’80s; migrants and Muslims today — but this does not mean that they move on from one to the next. They still hate all minorities, and Tommy Robinson’s flirtation with zionism and Hindutva does not mean he has fallen in love with Jews and Indians.

The people who claim that Israel is the moving force behind the riots take the view that the recent far-right street violence has made a fundamental break from classical fascism. This time, they say, hatred of migrants is a side-issue (which will be news to the refugees too terrified to go out of their homes). Instead, we’re told, these are “Islamophobic riots” and this proves that they are inspired by zionism to punish Muslims for supporting the Palestinians. According to David Miller: “The riots show that Israel is trying to burn down the UK.”

Illustrating this in his latest video are pictures of demonstrators draped in Israeli flags. Pause the video and look closely, though, and it’s clear that these are not images of the riots. They are photos of a far-right zionist counter-protest at one of the London Gaza demonstrations, probably the one on April 27 2024. No nicer, but not the same thing as the marauding mobs in Southport three months later.

In this scenario, racism against Muslims is treated as a novel, alien phenomenon, brought in from outside, which is odd, given Europe’s centuries-long record of persecution of both Muslims and Jews going back to the Crusades and the Inquisition.

But even this tortured logic is missing from Lowkey’s interpretation of the riots in a recent Double Down News video. He lists names, episodes and “facts” — some reliable, others questionable — leaving us to string them together and draw the conclusion that Robinson is being financed and worked from behind by Israel. It would have muddied the waters to mention Robinson’s well-established connections with other far-right groups, parties and governments, such as when he travelled to Poland in 2017 to join the 60,000-strong far-right nationalist march on Poland’s independence day. It would be even more confusing to show that Robinson’s Polish far-right friends are as anti-semitic as ever, as well as Islamophobic, anti-Roma, anti-refugee and anti-zionist from a right-wing perspective.

The juxtaposition of this outbreak of fascism in Britain with Israel’s devastation of Palestinian lives is significant. There are connections between the genocide being enacted in Gaza and the upheavals on our streets. For thoughtful commentators this shines a light on the dynamic interrelationship of colonialism, racism, capitalism, neoliberalism and fascism, their economic foundations and their social and political manifestations.

John McDonnell has given a measured analysis of the different layers of far-right activism, saying: “At the top are leading demagogues, the political provocateurs … Beneath them are a relatively small phalanx of hardline foot-soldiers, who have been trained and involved in fascist groups like the English Defence League over the years … the true-believing fascist muscle behind the riots. …Then there is a larger group: the disgruntled, the dispossessed and the disillusioned, who are prey to the simple, beguiling message that someone else is to blame for how they feel.”

The emphasis on Robinson by those trying to hang the riots on the Russians or Israel, and the downplaying of other fascist groups and individuals, as well as the role of successive governments and the British state, creates a thoroughly distorted picture. We have just fought an election in which both Labour and the Conservatives tried to outbid Reform UK in blaming migrants and minorities especially Muslims, for poverty, powerlessness and the disintegration of state services. And the government’s response to the riots has been to ramp up deportations and announce the reopening of immigration detention centres?

We’ve also witnessed Reform UK’s leader, Nigel Farage, feeding the mob with the claim that the police were withholding the truth about the Southport killer, and defending the rioters’ “sense of injustice” about “two-tier policing.” It is peculiar in the extreme to detach this sophisticated political operator from Robinson and his followers, many of them with longstanding links to football violence and anti-lockdown disorder, chanting: “We want our country back!”

In a recent interview, Robinson linked “mass immigration” with the “New World Order” and castigated the “far left” for allegedly being funded by the wealthy progressive Hungarian Jew, George Soros. This is a classic fascist, anti-semitic reference to the Great Replacement Theory which alleges that a shadowy Jewish conspiracy is replacing white Christians in the West with Muslims.

Despite all this evidence of a deep-rooted far-right ideology and relationships between different far-right entities, nationally and internationally, including fascistic elements in Israel and Russia, an alluringly simple analysis has captured the imagination of some anti-racists, including the targets of the rioters and their supporters.

The exclusive focus on backing from zionists (actually, far-right zionists, or the fascist-infused Israeli government) to the exclusion of their other backers is very dangerous. The fascists blame international forces for people’s troubles, rather than naming capitalism or the super-rich and the governments that sustain them.

But Lowkey and Miller are creating a mirror image of that claim. It seems extraordinary that anyone locating themselves on the left should ignore the breadth of support for far-right activism. How does this fit in with the backing of Donald Trump and US white supremacists, whose roots go back to transatlantic slavery? Or Robinson cosying up Indian fascism with its roots in Hitler’s Nazism? Not to mention his active support from far-right and fascist movements across Europe.

This exclusive focus strongly implies that the far right is simply being manipulated by Israel. This is worryingly close to a persistent anti-semitic thread in Western culture that portrays the Jews as puppeteers, controlling the world from behind the scenes. Miller’s latest theory is that the government’s decision to drop its objections to the arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, and rumours that they might stop selling arms to Israel “would be enough for them to push the riot button.” Apart from the absurdity of the image, this lets the fascists at every level — the ideologues, the organisers and the rioters on the streets — off the hook.

No-one made them set fire to hotels full of migrants. No-one made them throw bricks through the windows of mosques. No-one made them whip up fears of so-called “Asian gangs.”

“He made me do it” is for the playground. These far-right activists take money and political support from wherever they can get it. But whether it comes from Tel Aviv, Moscow or New Delhi, Washington DC or Warsaw, they are not helpless puppets but are responsible for their own decisions to wreck and loot, and to force migrants and minorities to live under a pall of fear.

This article first appeared in the Morning Star. Reproduced with permission

Life in the Occupied Town

Wartime mission: remain sophisticated.


26/08/2024

In the past, both in Russia and Ukraine, there was a tradition of burying virgins in wedding dresses. The dress symbolized purity and innocence. For many women back then, marriage was a significant life goal, a solemn transition from one state to another. Death could be seen as a passage to another world, and the wedding dress symbolized this transition, much like the transition from maidenhood to married life.

The first time I saw an elaborate wedding dress sticking out of a coffin  I was in school. Across from my school was an abandoned nine-story building. Someties, teenagers jumped from its roof. It happened quite often, maybe a couple of times a year. This time it was a girl from the neighboring building who took her own life. Through window of my school, I could see both the abandoned building where she jumped from due to heartbreak and the entrance to her home where the coffin stood.

I had a friend named Nina. She thought I liked her, but I actually liked her brother. She also watched the funeral from the school window. Later, she asked me to walk her home. Nina wanted to show me something.

Now she is 34 years old, and her child is the same age we were back then. Nina took me home and pointed to the wardrobe. She seemed suspiciously nervous. She didn’t want to open the wardrobe herself, so I had to do it. Inside a wedding dress hung on the clothes rack. Nina asked, “Do you think my parents want to get rid of me?”

The dress was big and white. That day, it was easier for us to imagine such a dress in an open coffin than at a wedding, because funerals had become the main topic at school. Suddenly, Nina asked if I wanted to see her in the dress. I didn’t. But I noticed she blushed. I felt she wanted me to see her in it. So, just for that reason, I nodded yes.

Nina took off her sweater and t-shirt. She removed her jeans, wearing only underwear. I tried not to look at her, but she took so long to change that it made me angry. I asked her to hurry up, and she started rushing. When she put on the wedding dress, she said, “My parents have been yelling at me a lot. They probably want to bury me. But I wanna live. Will you protect me?”

I told her she was silly and walked away. Only ten years later, recalling this episode by chance, I realized that young Nina was trying to flirt with me. She knew it was her mother’s old wedding dress. Our ciuntries have many weird traditions. We not only bury virgins in wedding dresses but also keep wedding dresses for life, even though we know there won’t be another chance to wear them. At least not in an acceptable way, one not associated with nervous breakdowns and nostalgia.

This morning, I called Nina. For some reason, I thought it would be amusing to suddenly ask her what happened to her mother’s wedding dress. But I must have interrupted her from something important. Nina didn’t understand which dress I was talking about. Nevertheless, we ended up talking on the phone for almost an hour.

Now she knows I’m gay. She knows I never noticed her attempts at closeness. I know her husband in person. They have a wonderful son growing up. They still live in our hometown, which used to be in Ukraine but now is in Russia. It’s an unusual life experience. But raising their son takes all her strength, so Nina admits she doesn’t have time to process everything going on. She’s just living day by day. She asks, “You won’t blame me for this, will you?”

It’s becoming more common among those who stayed in Ukraine to hear that during job interviews, a new norm is to ask: “Do you have relatives or friends in the occupied territories?” If you answer yes, you might be seen as unreliable. I don’t tell Nina that during our conversation. I don’t want to upset her with the knowledge that my connection to her could harm my reputation. Nina is important to me because we share childhood memories: the dead virgins in wedding dresses, the abandoned house where teenagers jumped from the roof, and school.

Nina says there are unexpected benefits to the occupation. The new generation of teenagers enjoys hanging out on the roof of the abandoned house. Nina used to worry her son might end up there and something bad would happen to him. But now, there are military personnel all over the town. They guard banks, mines, the mayor’s office, and the local sanatorium. The military also guards the abandoned building. Because of this, in the two years since the occupation began, not a single teenager has jumped from the roof.

I tell Nina about my cousin who stays indoors because he fears forced military conscription. I tell her how boys are caught on the streets in Ukraine and force to go to war. Nina knows about this, but she says it’s different in our town. In Donetsk and Luhansk, they also catch men, but in our mining town, they don’t. Men are stopped more often than women here to check their documents, but usually, that’s where it ends. I hear anger in Nina’s voice when she says, “If Ukraine liberates us, we’ll have to flee the country to keep my husband from being taken to war. But I don’t want to flee. I want to live in my hometown.”

Nina says she still can’t get used to the curfew. Just a couple of days ago, she told her husband how much she misses their nighttime walks on the beach. That same day, the Ukrainian army shelled our town. Ukraine is having problems with electricity. People in Kyiv are without power for 6-7 hours. They say the situation will get worse. Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to sell electricity to the EU. The Ukrainian army has intensified shelling of our town to reclaim the nuclear power plant located nearby. A few days ago, a substation was blown up. The town was without electricity for over a day, but it’s been restored now.

“When I heard the explosion, I was home alone,” Nina tells me, her voice becoming detached, as if she’s talking about someone else. “My husband took our kid to visit his parents. I needed some rest. I couldn’t get out of bed for a long time. And then I heard a very loud explosion. You know what I did? I got up right away. I dressed up. There was no electricity. I just sat in the armchair and waited. I thought if a missile hit my house, at least they would find my body dressed.”

Then Nina asks how much Pepsi costs here. She mentions that at the beginning of the occupation, Pepsi disappeared from the stores. Some Russian equivalent appeared instead. But now Pepsi is back on the shelves. She’s curious about the prices of soft drinks, as well as meat and seaweed, because she wants to understand the price differences.

Initially, stores had prices in two currencies: hryvnia and rubles. Now, only rubles remain. But Nina says there’s a different exchange rate here. Everything is more expensive. Prices are high, but salaries have also increased. Nina says it’s livable. She mentions she’s tired of the explosions. Even after two years of war, the explosions still scare her. But she’s also scared of rumors that Russia might stop using dollars all together as a result of sanctions. Nina doesn’t really understand it. Everyone keeps their savings in dollars, so does she. Nina’s worried about what will happen to her money.

“There are things you can never get used to,” says Nina, and her voice becomes familiar again. “You can’t get used to kids ending their lives every year, jumping from the roof of the same building. You can’t get used to explosions when your son sleeps nearby and you don’t know what to do to protect him.”

Then we discuss Nina’s intimate life and my new lovers. We talk about the book she’s reading this week. Only at the end of our conversation does she say, “You know, it’s strange how kids have been ending their lives from that building’s roof for years without anyone caring. It’s odd they only blocked the entrance due to the war now. Isn’t that rather strange to you?”

 

This piece is a part of a series, The Mining Boy Notes, published on Mondays and authored by Ilya Kharkow, a writer from Ukraine. For more information about Ilya, see his website. You can support his work by buying him a coffee.

 

“Individuals cannot do much. You have to organize”

Interview with lawyer Nadija Samour about the postponed “From the River to the Sea” trial


Hi Nadija. Thanks for talking to us. Could you start by briefly introducing yourself? Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Nadija Samour. I work as a criminal defence lawyer, and I am also the senior legal advisor for the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), which stands in solidarity with Palestine advocates and Palestinian rights, and offers legal support.

We’re here today outside the Tiergarten courthouse. Can you explain what just happened?

There was a court hearing scheduled for my client, who is accused of “using propaganda of a terrorist organisation”. This is the legal code. What they mean is she has used or shouted the slogan, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

The accusation is that this slogan is owned by Hamas, and that when you use it publicly, it’s propaganda for a banned or terrorist organisation. Of course, this is ridiculous, because the slogan is much older than Hamas, and the Federal Ministry of the Interior has absolutely no proof that it is a Hamas slogan. There is no proof because it’s just not true.

And what happened today? [this interview took place on 22nd August, 2024]

My colleague, Alexander Gorski, and I arrived with our client. We were ready to fight off this accusation, but the judge told us that he had not allocated enough time for this trial. He said he wasn’t aware that there would be so much attention and so many people would come.

We had prepared a proper defence, with applications for witnesses and expert opinions, and he acted surprised. But every judge knows that the most minor accusation at court needs at least an hour. The new date will be on 11th November. I really hope a lot of people will show up again, just like today.

We believe that he didn’t want to face it, and that there was a lot of press attention. He wasn’t very well prepared. But if you’re a judge, and you follow the public debate and read jurists’ magazines, you would know that this is a controversial question.

I was just talking to someone who asked: does the judge not read newspapers?

Exactly. That is ridiculous. I believe that he’s scared. Before the trial, he already said, “I won’t make a decision on this. Let the higher courts decide”. It’s a mixture of cowardice and laziness.

This is the second case in Berlin around “From the River to the Sea”, and the second time there’s been a protest outside. What is the role of the protests in affecting what happens?

I think it’s very important. It’s important for a client to experience solidarity on an interpersonal level, but it’s also important because the protests draw international interest into Germany.

Some weeks ago, I was in Geneva at the UN on a trip organised by Amnesty International. There was a special session on the human right of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. I was there with some students from the US who were active in the encampments. We met people from the office of the Higher Commissioner for Human Rights and the deputies of some countries. And everyone was asking me: “What the hell is happening in Germany?”

If it wasn’t for these demonstrations and the brave and stubborn way in which people keep on protesting, we wouldn’t gain this attention.

And yet, despite the protests, a lot of people aren’t really aware of everything that’s going on. I was talking to two women outside the court today, and they said, of course they’re here, but they didn’t know that there are other similar cases. So firstly, how many other cases are there?

I would say in the hundreds. Not all of these cases have reached court level yet. The police start investigating, they give the file to the prosecutor, and the prosecutor decides whether to drop the case. Most of these cases are still with the prosecutor. But to my knowledge, there are around ten cases at court level already, where the prosecutor has decided to file.

That’s just for Berlin. I don’t have the numbers for other places, but they must be in the hundreds, as this is a slogan that is really characteristic for the Palestine demonstrations. But people are not giving in. They’re not letting the slogan go. And I think this is very good.

How do people find out about other cases?

The ELSC is trying to follow up on all the cases. But we don’t know about them all. Not everyone is organised or part of a political group that knows how to deal with the repression and reach out to us. If you want change, then you have to do it collectively. If people do have court cases, they should contact the ELSC so we can coordinate support.

Why has the phrase “From the River to the Sea” become so important in Germany recently?

There is an official reasoning, and then there’s my interpretation. Officially, Germany felt they needed to react after 7th October. They see themselves as a close ally of Israel. And then there’s this spooky term, “Staatsräson”.

They felt they had to do something, so they banned two organizations that do not have a lot to do with each other. One is Hamas, the other is Samidoun. There are 70 pages explaining why they are banned, and in both cases they say they use the slogan as a trademark.

The German government basically invented the connection between the slogan and the banned organization. In the case of Hamas, they say the words are in the Charter of 2017. This is ridiculous, because they aren’t using it as a slogan. They are using it as a way of describing the territory of Palestine.

This is the official reasoning. But I would say that they needed a tool to oppress and repress the demonstrations. At the beginning, they tried to ban the demonstrations outright. They had trouble because the constitution doesn’t really allow that, and international pressure was mounting. People saw that Germany was not respecting basic democratic and fundamental rights.

So they said, “Okay, you know what? We won’t ban the demonstrators, but we’ll annoy them to hell. Let’s confront them with arrests”. These arrests were brutal – people have been badly hurt when they were arrested. So they said: “Let’s create some images for the press about those barbarities, and use this slogan to criminalize the demonstrations, if we can’t ban them”.

When you’re talking about “they”, who is giving the orders here?

It’s the Federal Ministry for the Interior. It’s basically the government. They have invented the interpretation of this slogan. The judiciary is technically independent and has said in many cases either that the slogan is not Hamas propaganda, or at least that it’s not clear. The judiciary has spoken, but the government doesn’t really care, because they have another agenda.

This agenda is not only to criminalize and harass those demonstrations. It’s also to prepare for mass deportations, as Scholz said last year. And what better reason you have for mass deportations than young Arab and Muslim men who have allegedly committed an antisemitic crime? This is a red carpet for deportation orders.

More people were arrested outside the court today. How much do we know about what happened and why it is happening?

I think the majority of today’s cases are because of the slogan. People know exactly what they are risking, but they do it because they are convinced, just like me, that this is really not a criminalized slogan, and we have to push for it.

In October, when the demonstrations were banned, people didn’t care. They were brave, they were courageous, they were stubborn, and they kept on demonstrating, until they broke the ban and enforced their rights.

How can you explain that courts in Mannheim say that “From the River to the Sea” is okay, and courts in Berlin just fined someone €600?

Unfortunately, I feel that the judiciary in Berlin is always a bit more close to the government. You can also see this with the cases related to the demonstration bans. They are sent to the Administrative Court, which always rules in favour of the state on this topic. This is really worrying.

I believe that there’s a technical difference as well. The case on the 6th of August used another code – condoning criminal acts. It was a very cheap trick. They said, “you used the slogan before the official ban, but you used the slogan in proximity to 7th October. This means there is absolutely no other interpretation possible than you are in favour of the deeds of 7th October”.

This won’t hold. It is a baseless kind of argumentation. In today’s case we had another code of using propaganda.

Do you think it’s significant that they’re using different codes in different cases? I get the feeling they’re seeing what they can get away with and what they can’t.

I see it like that as well. The further away we are from 7th October, the less they can use the claim of proximity. I think this is a one-off judgment, and that most of the rest of the cases will focus on propaganda of banned and terrorist organizations.

There has also been a push to criminalise the symbol of the red triangle. Why are they doing this, and what’s the chance of it becoming a law?

The red triangle is being discussed as a symbol of Hamas, and it’s also being discussed as a symbol of calling for violence or marking enemies. At the same time, the red triangle has many more meanings, for example, the Communists who were deported to the concentration camps. The VVN-BdA (main German anti-Fascist organisation) is still using it today.

And there are monuments all over Berlin with a red triangle

Exactly. So again, you will create a gray zone, where they will always say, “well, it really depends on the context.” This will give the police the powers to arrest people, to hurt people, to harass people, to intimidate people. They always create this kind of situation where the cops are free to act as they want, and then perhaps later, after you lost a lot of time and money and nerves in court, they might drop it.

But they are facing real formal difficulties in codifying this. So they tried the smart trick of saying that a demonstration has an order with limitations. You cannot do this. You cannot say that. You cannot call for violence. And so they say: “Whoever uses the red triangle is calling for violence, and therefore is violating the orders of the demonstration”. It’s not banned as the red triangle, but it’s interpreted as calling for violence.

So theoretically, somebody could be arrested for carrying a VVN flag, although the VVN have actually taken a very pro-Israel position?

Ah, you are missing an important point, which is racism. When they talk about context, what they really mean is: what does the person who is carrying or using the red triangle look like? The context that matters is the prosecution of anything related to Palestine or anti-colonialism. Let’s not assume that the authorities will act stupid and arbitrarily, but I think they know exactly how to target the right people.

Let’s try and end on an optimistic note. Palestinians, and other supporters of Palestine are being sent to court, they are being attacked by the police. In official German politics, they don’t see much support. Where can they find hope that things could change and that they can win justice?

We are winning already. It doesn’t always feel like this, but I think that we are already winning. Look at the amount of people talking about Palestine, the people showing up for Palestine, the people being so courageous and not backing down for Palestine.

I’ve been living in Berlin for more than 20 years, and I’ve never seen such solidarity since perhaps the last Iraq War in 2003. I studied at the HU. I’m not particularly proud of it, because it’s a very reactionary law school. But it used to be impossible to talk about Palestine before, as the AstA (student council) used to be so anti-Deutsch.

Now, at all universities in Berlin, people are organizing for Palestine. Artists are coming out for Palestine. School children are coming out for Palestine. We still lack the trade unions, but we’re working on it. This is unprecedented in my memory. I don’t know what it was like in the 70s, but that’s at least what I can tell you.

Why do you think things are changing?

The contradictions are so obvious, the confrontation is so clear, that we’re not only talking about a genocide. This is really bad enough, but we’re talking about a crystal clear complicity – of the German state, German industry, the German ruling class – in this. It’s even a partnership perhaps.

At the same time we have the hypocritical double standards and the readiness of Germany to crack down on their own constitution, on their own promise to respect international law, according to their own standards – just to support this genocide. This obvious contradiction is what people are reacting to. They don’t want to be alienated any more from their ability to act.

If people read what you say and are horrified by what’s going on, what can they do as individuals?

Individuals cannot do much. You have to organize. Reach out to the organization that you align with most. The Left Berlin is a very good one, a strong and important one. But also, if you are a student, reach out to your student group, if you are a worker, make some change in your trade union. You can do anything, anywhere, also in your neighbourhood.

You can reach out to the next pro-Palestine organisation. You can do things together collectively much better. It’s also much more fun, and you’re protected much more than as an individual. If you’re not there yet, keep talking about Palestine. Stay informed. Check out the European Legal Support Centre for the struggle against repression. Check out the BDS campaign.

This is something that people do on an individual level. The real force is when you do it as a collective, but this is something very practical. Boycott, divest, and sanction Israel for their human rights abuses against Palestinians.

And of course, there’s the postponed case on 11th of November.

Exactly, and the court is public. People are welcome to join. The case starts at 9 o’clock at the Amtsgericht Tiergarten on Turmstraße.

Histories Divided and Shared in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park

Interview with Miriam Schickler about her new audio walk Geteilte Welten, exploring the constructions of memory behind memorial sites in Berlin


25/08/2024

In May 2024, Miriam Schickler released the audio walk “Geteilte Welten” (“Shared/Divided Worlds”) – available via online download for free or a donation. All you need is a couple free hours and a pair of headphones. There will also be a communal walk and picnic on September the 1st, starting at 15:00.

Can you introduce yourself and your new audio walk?

My name is Miriam Schickler. I work at the intersection of sound research performance and education, mainly in collaborative ways with others. Though this time I haven’t [collaborated] much because I started working on it right when the pandemic started.

I worked on the audiowalk for four years, I would call it a sonic intervention into Berlin’s memory landscapes. It guides the listener through Berlin Tiergarten where all the major Holocaust memorials are situated, but also other public sites there. It’s my critique of German memory culture as a divisive political tool. That is why it tells different histories of violence – of the Holocaust, of colonialism, of migration – through their entanglements.

It’s also, therefore a re-appropriation of history and of memory. It points out that actually all this memory was fought for by communities and their allies. And this memory was taken up by the state and turned into a national concern, which de-politicized it.

As you go through the walk, you hear not only narration but also walking on gravel, church bells, whispered voices, echoes which are integrated into the experience. What is the role of these sounds for the experience of the walk?

I really felt a need to tell these stories in a different way, not just with language. The sound is not just the content but a sensual experience. I used a lot of binaural recordings, which means that you perceive the sound in a relatively “natural” way, as in a 3D way. It’s very immersive, and lifts you to a different level of perception, without losing contact with the space that you’re actually traversing. This is why I love audio walks so much, their potential to change your perception even on something that you think you know quite well.

We’re living in a society that is dominated by, well, we call it “ocular-centrism”. Meaning, we tend to rank vision over all other senses. It’s a very Western way of perception and it’s not necessarily the only way of gaining knowledge, right? So this is what interests me with sound.

One of the things we’ve noticed in The Left Berlin is the difference in memory discourses here depending on what language something is in, whether it’s English or German. I’m wondering, since the tour has versions in both languages, whether you see these sounds as bridging this gap?

It does in a way. It was very interesting to work with the two languages, I started with English because most of my education took place in English. I read mainly in English, but it was super-important for me that all of it would be articulated in German. I worked on it in German then changed the English again, with a more precise understanding of it.

And another thing I noticed during the tour is the amount of care that you stress for the participant, urging them to take breaks, watch out for traffic, etc. What is the role of this?

While I was writing and composing it, I always had the question of who am I doing this for? Who am I addressing? And I tried to be as open as possible to different positionalities. But I was mainly concerned with people who have experienced the type of violence discussed in the walk, whether directly or in their families. I wanted to make sure that they don’t feel alone. Because for me, often being the only Jew in different spaces while growing up in Germany, when people talked about history it was often a very lonely experience.

One of your past projects, “Echoing Yafa”, also engaged in memory politics by recreating a history that had been actively erased, that of a destroyed Palestinian neighbourhood. What is it about audio walks or work that makes it such a powerful tool for engaging both erasures and constructions of memory?

“Echoing Yafa” tells the story of Manshiyyah, a Palestinian neighbourhood that now literally lies underneath Tel Aviv. I started working on it, because it was difficult for visitors to the city to get access to that kind of information about the Nakba. Audio walks are a very accessible medium, you don’t need a guide or appointment, you can just download or stream it for free and do it whenever you want. Along with the multi-sensorial part I mentioned before, you’re being asked to engage with the surrounding in different ways and walk different routes, look at things that you hadn’t paid attention to before.

I’m wondering if your approach between the two walks has changed because of the time between them or the difference between an Israeli memory politics or a German one?

I mean, I’m sitting between these two nationalities, my father is a Jewish Israeli citizen, my mother is a non-Jewish German. The big difference, I think, is that for “Echoing Yafa” I worked very closely with a lot of Palestinian collaborators and was not telling my own story. I wouldn’t do it that way today. At the same time I’m implicated in both stories. In “Echoing Yafa” because I’m the daughter of a Holocaust survivor coming to Palestine as a child in 1944 or 1945. But there’s definitely a connection that goes beyond who I am. I see them historically as a sequence, as if “Geteilte Welten” is the prequel to “Echoing Yafa”.

What made you want to do this audio walk about Berlin?

The easiest answer is because I live here, and I work where I live. I actually never wanted to deal with those topics, I grew up during this memory culture boom when they started erecting all those monuments, and also because of the proximity of it all in my family.

When I came back to Germany to live, these topics became bigger and bigger. The instrumentalisation of memory, the weaponisation of antisemitism – I felt the urgency to deal with it. And the memorials are central sites. Think of the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. It’s as if these blocks of cement came to signify German memory culture. 

And now that your audio walk has been released, how do you expect it to live in what is a changing city, and impact people’s experiences of the city?

I just hope people will find out about it and experience it. It’s not gonna change things directly, but it has the potential to open a lot of discussions, specifically between communities. Something that I didn’t realise until after I had finished, was how much it’s actually about having space for grief and mourning. So much is being taken away, or repressed by the city of Berlin. So I hope it will open up possibilities to think, feel and mourn together, and turn this into political energy to work against all this continued violence and repression.

Talking about the importance of spaces to grieve, you discuss in the tour how the Memorial to Europe’s Sinti and Roma Murdered Under Nazism is now set to be altered and damaged in order to create an S-bahn line.

Yeah, I mean the plans are not clear yet. To me it’s scandalous that this is possible. I find this memorial different from the one to the murdered Jews of Europe. Because the latter wasn’t a Jewish initiative and I don’t know anyone Jewish who identifies with it. Whereas the one for Rom*nja and Sinti*zze is a really important space for political activism, but also as a site to mourn and grieve.

It would be terrible if this were destroyed or altered. And thinking that an S-bahn would go underneath it… I mean, imagine how that would feel, with the history of the Deutsche Bahn and the Reichs Bahn that carried millions of people to their deaths. It’s absurd. I don’t think it would be possible to come up with the same plans for the Jewish memorial, and that shows again how selective this is and how opportunistic.

Throughout the walk, you repeatedly engage in the overlaps in the histories of the Holocaust and colonialism. But you also refuse to engage in simplistic identity politics, rather, you prefer to leave things messy. What is the idea behind how you engage in these entangled histories?

It comes from how memory has come to be abused, as if history and identity can give us a clear path to the present or future. I think both non-Jewish German and Jewish identity have been instrumentalised by Israel or Germany into some sort of entitlement. As if because we did “A”, we have to do “B”; or because we went through “A”, we are entitled to “B”. That’s something I refuse.

There’s a legitimacy to identity politics, but there’s also a danger of reproducing really simplistic binary oppositions – where does that leave us with the politics? In a way, this audio walk is feeding from my own biography and family, but what motivates me to do it is not my German-Jewish identity, but my deep commitment to justice. It’s a political thing. I have a relevant perspective to speak on these things, but I’m not entitled to it. And I want to show how messy and contradictory history is, and how we’re all implicated.

It also stood out to me how you engaged historical content in its messiness, such as the question of Queer people during the Holocaust. You challenge the monument’s narrative that only gay men deserve memorialisation. So you give space to the targeting of Queer people more broadly, while also stressing how important it is to recognize that many people who hid their queerness were among the perpetrators during the Holocaust. I’m curious how you think these historical complexities are useful for us today?

First of all, to de-center the narrative of the perpetrators, in order to not repeat the violence through  their language and how they categorised people. But it is also a way to question and destabilize our understanding of the categories of innocent victims and evil perpetrators. Men who engaged in homosexuality were persecuted by the Nazis and women weren’t, at least in Germany. In Austria they were, interestingly. What does that actually mean? Did that apply to everyone the same way? What about a person that was racialised and homosexual, or disabled and homosexual? 

And what does it mean today? We have a lesbian leading an extreme right wing party [Ed: Alice Weidel, co-lead candidate for the federal AfD], we have this memorial and laws against discrimination. But that doesn’t mean that Queer people are all safe. It also depends on where they are, and what else is in their identity. I think you always have to look a little bit closer in order to understand, to not fall into traps, and to be in solidarity.

On that note of solidarity, how has it taken putting out this walk in the present political moment?

It was meant to be released in November 2023. It was really difficult to finish the project while things have been escalating so quickly. The history of the Holocaust has been instrumentalised to such an unprecedented level. So much of what’s happening now in Gaza and elsewhere is implicated in these histories. It was impossible to include all of it, but I really hope it speaks to the situation we face now.

There’s a lot of overlapping of time periods during the walk, or things that don’t fit into a linear time frame. What were you trying to achieve while engaging this splicing of chronology within a given monument? 

In the hegemonic narrative the Holocaust transcends history. It’s the Zivilisationsbruch, the rupture of civilization, there’s no before or after. I think this is really detrimental to our understanding of it and it enables its instrumentalisation. In order to deepen our understanding of how violence and oppression are being produced and reproduced, we really need to move away from this. 

At the same time it is really important to be precise and intentional when we engage with these entanglements and comparisons to sharpen our understanding. The danger of equating everything with everything and relativising historical injustice is real. It doesn’t just concern the Holocaust. I didn’t have to construct these historical connections artificially, they exist. They are mind boggling, like the example of the German engagements in Venezuela that’s hardly talked about.

Can you tell us more about that?

It was the first attempt to establish a German colony. The Welser merchant family from Augsburg co-financed the Spanish conquest of America. In return they got Venezuela and called it little Venice. It didn’t go well for the Germans as a colony, but people kept migrating and profiting from it, including during the Third Reich. The most recent example is a very important site of the walk, the Global Stone Project in Tierpark. Here a German artist took a rock which is important to the Pemón indigenous community in Venezuela, and dumped it in the Tiergarten to become part of his so-called “peace project”. So one of the stories is how this indigenous community fought for 20 years to get it back.

These overlapping histories are really hard to lay out as a written interview, but that speaks to the power of the audio walk where you deftly tie these together, in a way that an interview can’t.

All these are examples of connections, so I’m convinced that these worlds are shared. And I think that’s very important for the left, where we often end up fighting because we lose sight of the connections of our struggles.

Thank you for your time, Miriam.