Harmony works differently. Masha Gessen seemed willing to talk and the day before had complained on X that "not a single German journalist" had asked for a statement. But when Katja Iken and Jonas Breng from the history editorial team called, their interview started quite frosty and was close to breaking off before it picked up speed.
Gessen, who was born into a Jewish family in Moscow in 1967 and then emigrated to the United States, describes himself as non-binary and has published a number of books, mostly about Russia, and has received several awards for his work. Last week, one was to be added in Bremen: the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought, named after the Jewish intellectual who emigrated from Germany in 1933 and later became a U.S. citizen. The award ceremony was wrangled with for days. Shortly before, Gessen's essay "In the Shadow of the Holocaust" had been published in the magazine »The New Yorker«. After criticism from the German-Israeli Society, among others, the Böll Foundation and the Bremen Senate withdrew from the awarding of the prize, which the sponsoring association nevertheless handed over on Saturday, albeit on a smaller scale than initially planned.
The controversial article is about the culture of remembrance in Germany, Poland and Ukraine. On the pitfalls of coming to terms with the past against the backdrop of the Middle East war. One can discover in it astute observations about the cultural industry and the debates about anti-Semitism – or mistake it for a fraying, weakly laminated essay of enormous length (more than 50,000 characters). Above all, Masha Gessen caused outrage when he compared the situation in the Gaza Strip to that in a "Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany." What is happening now in Gaza: "The ghetto is being liquidated."
"There is a culture of silencing in Germany"
These passages led to a scandal, because Gessen thus places the Israeli state, which after the war was the refuge of Jewish survivors persecuted by the Nazis, in the vicinity of the Nazis. Was it a calculated provocation just before the award ceremony? In the interview, Gessen vehemently rejects this and sticks to the Gaza ghetto comparison. "If there are potential comparables, we have to ask ourselves what we can do to prevent more civilians from dying. Anyone who pretends that the Holocaust cannot be compared to anything and therefore cannot repeat itself cannot prevent the catastrophe." In Gaza, he said, "the revengeful destruction of a place and its people" can currently be seen.
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Masha Gessen: "I don't see any discourse! That's the problem."
Photo: Jens Schlueter / Getty Images
Now, many researchers are energetic advocates of historical comparisons – as long as they promise a real gain in knowledge. But if differences are so enormous that they have to be subtracted for a long time, the persuasive power of a comparison in terms of content dwindles and makes it a mere rhetorical gimmick. What should the systematic extermination of millions of European Jews in the Second World War, the deliberate annihilation of an entire culture and religion, have in common with the recent war in the Middle East, with which Israel is reacting to the massive terrorist attack of the Islamist Hamas?
For all his understandable empathy for Gaza's civilian population, for all his legitimate criticism of Israel's government and army, Masha Gessen is unable to plausibly describe parallels between Gaza today and the ghettos of 80 years ago and is quick to accuse the debates in this country of "some form of surveillance" of the cultural sphere. In Germany, there is a culture of silencing, of silencing, a narrowing of political discussion." Voices critical of Israel would be silenced.
On the other hand, however, they are, including Gessen, amazingly vocal. But feel free to make up your own mind: You can find the story interview here, and the German translation of the XXL essay in the »New Yorker« here . And in a SPIEGEL editorial, Tobias Rapp comments on the "cowardice of the cultural industry": art and culture "also thrive on the crackpots and their ideas. From the steep thesis. The blank intellectual cheque."
Heatedness knows no bounds
The war in the Middle East feeds the tendency towards steep thesis everywhere else. "Apartheid state", "racism" or "colonialism" roll off the lips of political activists as a matter of course, without distance or substance. Especially those who couldn't even name the river and the sea when they chanted "From the river to the sea". If you want even more attention, you reach for the top shelf of the debate: the accusation of "genocide".
And there it is again, the Holocaust comparison. In a varied form. After all, this rarely refers to the indiscriminate Hamas murders of Israeli civilians and festival-goers near the border with Gaza – but almost exclusively to Israel's alleged genocidal intentions against the Palestinian people.
This can be heard not only on the streets of Neukölln or in university lecture halls. There are also bitter disputes in academia, internationally. "That's where friendships break up," says the German-Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm in SPIEGEL. Lawyers and historians, politicians and demonstrators use the term genocide in completely different ways. "Genocide is referred to as the 'crime of all crimes', even in the judiciary," says Munich-based international law expert Daniel-Erasmus Khan. "This is the worst crime imaginable. If you want to discredit your political opponent, it is best to use the term genocide. This evokes associations with the Holocaust."
History editor Christoph Gunkel reports on how the Polish Jew Raphael Lemkin once sought a definition for "crimes of barbarism", why his neologism "genocide" prevailed after the monstrous mass murders of the National Socialists and why it was also incorporated into UN conventions from 1948 onwards. Renowned researchers explain which crimes against humanity amount to genocide and what this means for the war between Israel and the murderous gangs of Hamas – an attempt at an objective classification in an extremely heated debate.
None of this is Christmassy. After all, we have last-minute gift tips: 14 books for history lovers that have convinced our editors in 2023 and are sure to look magnificent under a glittering tinsel Nordmann fir. We wish you great celebrations and will be back soon with the first 24 newsletter. Write to us at any time at spiegelgeschichte@spiegel.de .
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