Controversial Hannah Arendt Prize Winner Sticks to Comparing Gaza Situation to Jewish Ghettos

Berlin/Bremen (dpa) – After the controversial awarding of the Hannah Arendt Prize for political thought, Masha Gessen sticks to the comparison of the situation in Gaza with Jewish ghettos during the Nazi era. “The claim of the uniqueness of the Holocaust places it outside of history,” Gessen said on Monday in Berlin during a discussion about the position in the Heinrich Böll Foundation with the foundation’s board members Imme Scholz and Jan Philipp Albrecht.

The Jewish author – Gessen defines himself as non-binary and therefore does not assign himself to any gender – was awarded the prestigious award. Gessen, born in Moscow in 1967, lives in New York and writes about political trends and conflicts in US and Russian society.

According to an article in “The New Yorker” magazine in which Gessen compared the situation in Gaza with the Jewish ghettos in occupied Europe, the honor originally planned in Bremen City Hall was canceled following criticism of these statements. The Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Bremen Senate withdrew from the award ceremony, which took place on a small scale on Friday.

“If we place the Holocaust outside of history, we are betraying the promise of ‘never again.’ The only way to keep that promise is to constantly ask yourself whether the things happening in the present are reminiscent of what happened 90 years ago years ago, are similar or substantially similar,” Gessen said. “We must not pretend that the Holocaust was impossible, even if it has already happened.”

“The reason I think the comparison is important is because I believe in language,” Gessen said. “If we use bad metaphors or analogies, we don’t understand what’s going on.” Gessen referred to numerous reports from Jewish voices from Gaza. “The majority of the population in Gaza is suffering from extreme hunger today.”

There was a lot of support for Gessen in the packed hall of the Green Party-affiliated foundation. Individual voices opposed. Scholz and Albrecht justified the foundation’s withdrawal from the award by saying, among other things, that a debate was not possible in this context. They are all the more grateful that Gessen accepted the invitation to Berlin.

© dpa-infocom, dpa:231218-99-343844/4

2023-12-18 23:17:30
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