While scrolling on Instagram last spring I came across an interesting interview published by The Left Berlin that included alternative views on German memory culture from a Palestinian perspective. Specifically regarding the popular Holocaust memorial near the Reichstag. Rasha Al Jundi and Michael Jabareen are Palestinian artists. They offer what I believe is an interesting and unique challenge to Germany’s myopic and self serving memory culture. The latter often ignores or downplays both the genocide in Namibia and the Roma/Sinti victims of Nazi oppression.
There was something very visually arresting about this diminutive but determined looking woman standing there with those concrete slabs looming over her while wearing her keffiyeh, calmly gazing directly at the camera. “What about us?” was the question that seemed to hang in the air above her. One aspect of her creative intervention that only became obvious to me relatively recently was that this was a powerful display of embodiment. She seemed to acknowledge the reality of the Palestinian body as an inherently disruptive force within the German mainstream.
The role of the artist as a disrupter, provocateur and one who names what others fear to articulate is embodied very well in the historical figure of Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, one of the founders of the Dada movement. ‘The Baroness,’ as she was known, was a counter-culture German woman. Her life and work is very important to my own artistic practice which concerns art as premonition and the craft of divination. It is those concepts that the Baroness fully embodied.
In retrospect, I see Rasha and Michael as engaging in similar provocations as the early Dadaists, who unconcerned with social norms and propriety – were willing to challenge the establishment. Often using their own bodies as the instruments of disruption. While in Berlin last summer my experiences in so-called leftist spaces underscored the need for an urgent intervention in German society.
The gaslighting and machinations of the pro-Israel “anti-Deutsch” weirdos, as well as the arrogant and delusional attitudes of German mainstream liberals, left me feeling like I was in the Twilight Zone. Most grotesque of all is how the German mainstream claims to “protect Jewish life” via their demented staatsraison. Meanwhile ignoring and denying the diversity of thought and opinion that exists within the Jewish community. One worthwhile intervention involves unearthing hidden perspectives from history that are relevant to the current situation with the Palestinians. Like these diary quotes from German Jewish scholar and Holocaust survivor Victor Klemperer:
“I cannot help myself, I sympathize with the Arabs who are in revolt, whose land is being ‘bought.’ A Red Indian fate, says Eva.”
“We hear a lot about Palestine now; it does not appeal to us. Anyone who goes there exchanges nationalism and narrowness for nationalism and narrowness. Also it is a country for capitalists.”
Unfortunately, many European Jews who agreed with Klemperer in his sympathies with the Palestinians were murdered by the Nazis. Something we must reflect upon when surveying the current social landscape.
Reflecting on these photos of Rasha and Michael at Sachsenhausen with the events of the past eleven months in mind, it became clear to me – as an independent researcher, activist and socially engaged artist – that the flames of fascism were never fully doused. The embers were left smouldering and now the house is once again on fire, especially for those facing genocide today. During the Civil Rights movement Harry Belafonte was surprised at Martin Luther King’s pessimism about Black Americans “integrating into a burning house” and asked him what the solution was. His response is a message for us today. “…become the firemen.” King said, “Let us not stand by and let the house burn.”
