As darkness fell in Berlin on Saturday evening, ghostly flickering candles appeared, as they do each November 9th, outside apartment doors.
The candles illuminate countless freshly polished brass plaques in pavements, so-called Stolpersteine or stumbling stones. Each is a memorial to a person who once lived at an address and lists their name, birth date and their fate: murdered, missing, fled.
November 9th, 1938 was when ordinary Germans turned against their Jewish friends and neighbours – or turned away. Egged on by Nazi rabble-rousers, people raided Jewish homes, ransacked businesses and burned down nearly 700 synagogues.
When the smoke had cleared and the broken glass was swept up, city authorities often sent traumatised Jewish communities the clean-up bills.
An estimated 700 people took their lives after November 9th and around 30,000 men were put in concentration camps, including the father and grandfather of Kurt Salomon Maier.
Then eight, now 94, Kurt remembers his mother dragging him with her to the attic of their apartment block.
“We hid under a tin bathtub there while stones flew through the windows of our apartment below,” he told the Bild tabloid.
For people in Berlin and other German cities, going down on their knees on November 9th to polish the brass Stolpersteine is a small gesture of humility towards crimes that can never be undone, but can – with vigilance – be prevented from recurring.
That is the logic of Nie Wieder, or never again, a slogan drilled into generations of German schoolchildren and a cornerstone of remembrance culture.
[ Europeans experiencing a ‘wave of anti-Semitism’, survey findsOpens in new window ]
Historians trace the phrase back to a memorial service held on April 19th, 1945 in the liberated Buchenwald concentration camp in eastern Germany.
An improvised camp newspaper recalls an oath taken that day by gaunt survivors in memory of the estimated 51,000 camp dead: to never again allow fascism and its horrors rise against excluded minorities.
Nie Wieder has a second, deeper, resonance for Jewish communities in Germany – and worldwide. Some see the slogan’s roots in Masada, a 1926 expressionistic poem by Ukrainian-born Yitzḥak Lamdan about a failed first-century revolt by the Jews in Judea against Roman rule.
Inspired by that poem, US rabbi Meir Kahane made Never Again the slogan of his radical Jewish Defence League (JDL), founded in 1968 to protect Jews against all forms of violence “by whatever means necessary”.
For Max Feldhake, rabbi of the Jewish community of Celle in Lower Saxony, Nie Wieder is a “succinct slogan that cannot be unpacked succinctly”.
Since the 1990s, Nie Wieder has been part of a shift in relations here with Israel, in which Germany took on a new role as a guarantor of Jewish security both in the disapora and in Israel. For ex-chancellor Angela Merkel, this was part of Germany’s Staatsräson, or reason of state.
“This is wildly new,” said Mr Feldhake, “both from a German perspective and a Jewish perspective.”
Nie Wieder began to evolve once more after the October 7th attacks. Barely a month on, many November 9th memorial services in Germany last year rang out with the slogan “Nie Wieder ist Jetzt” – never again is now.
In an emotional November 9th speech last year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised staunch German support to counter a new threat to Jews. He condemned the “intolerance and inhumanity” of those cheering “the murder, the savage slaughter of the innocents” in Israel.
A year on, though, ask Germans now what Nie Wieder means for them and the likely answer is a pained, ambivalent silence.
Their shame over a spike in anti-Semitic attacks here competes with anger over Israel’s retaliation in Gaza and Lebanon – and the spiralling civilian death tolls there. German politicians, courts and activists debate the consequences of previously unquestioned arms exports to Israel. A recent poll found that 33 per cent of Germans back Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, down from 62 per cent a year ago.
For Berlin-based Middle East analyst Peter Lintl, the aftermath of the October 7th attack means Nie Wieder is a slogan at war with itself, with multiple meanings that can no longer coexist.
“‘Never again is now’ insinuates the immediacy of the Holocaust while, conversely, courts examine whether Israel is itself committing genocide,” said Dr Lintl of Berlin’s SWP think-tank. “This dissonance is very difficult to resolve or endure and it goes to the heart of a German feeling now of being overwhelmed.”
In one corner, pro-Palestinian supporters in Germany complain of being criminalised and demonised for protests against Israel that flag the Buchenwald oath and postwar human rights treaties.
In the other corner, the Nie Wieder vow has never felt so fragile for many German Jews who see a rise of old anti-Semitism in new guises.
Days after Israeli football fans were attacked in Amsterdam, rabbi Max Feldhake speaks of a “massive chill factor” in Germany.
“Seeing 50 to 100 people in the U-Bahn with the keffiyeh [Palestinian scarf] does not make you feel safe as a Jew,” he said. “Walking with a kippa in certain areas of Berlin, something might happen and might not.”
Eight decades on in Germany, never say never again.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Our In The News podcast is now published daily - Find the latest episode here
