Dawdling in advance of the dinner party, my eye is drawn to the most tragic sight you can see in a German antique shop window: a brass menorah seeking a new owner.
Was the eight-armed candlestick, a star of David at its centre, too heavy to carry into exile? Or were the former owners surprised by a knock at the door and lead away, empty-handed?
At my Jewish friend’s apartment, a day after the end of Hanukkah, the menorah has already made room for a spectacular Christmas tree – and heated talk about Russian-American writer Masha Gessen.
Gessen’s New Yorker essay, In the Shadow of the Holocaust, landed last week with a bang in Germany. So much so that it endangered plans to award the 56-year-old writer a high-profile “prize for political thought”, named after the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt.
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Gessen’s essay is a reflection on memory politics in Germany, Poland and Ukraine in the last decades – and the minefield this area has become since the October 7th Hamas attacks that Israel says killed 1,200 people and saw 240 more taken hostage.
Walking through Berlin’s Jewish museum, Gessen recalls “thinking of the thousands of residents of Gaza killed” in the Israeli retaliation – about 19,000 to date, according to Gaza health officials.
“If I were to state this publicly in Germany,” Gessen writes, “I might get in trouble”.
A few paragraphs later, Gessen, who grew up in the Soviet Union as a descendant of Holocaust survivors, decides to get into trouble anyway.
Taking issue with politicians who describe the walled-in Gaza enclave as an “open-air prison”, Gessen writes that this “hyper-densely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound” recalls “a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany”. And since October 7th, Gessen concludes, “the ghetto is being liquidated”.
That prompted Bremen’s city-state government to withdraw its invitation to host the Hannah Arendt prize ceremony in the city’s ornate city hall. Then the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a Green Party-linked organisation and co-sponsor, pulled out, too.
For many, this circus was another problematic example of official Germany censoring critics of Israel since October 7th, even Jewish creatives such as Gessen or Berlin-based artist Candice Breitz, who has had an exhibition cancelled over claims – which she denies – that she backs Israel-critical groups.
So was Gessen entitled to compare Gaza to a Nazi-era Jewish Ghetto? Our humble dinner table consensus was: no.
“If you read Gessen’s piece closely, it’s filled with if/then syllogisms,” said one. “If you agree with this, then you must accept that. Gessen is nudging people to liken the Israeli government to the Nazis.”
As the weekend approached, with the prize ceremony up in the air, even Gessen began back-pedalling.
In a Friday interview with the US show Democracy Now!, Gessen said: “Obviously there are huge differences, I am not claiming by any means that this is a 1:1 comparison. ... what I am arguing is that the similarities are so substantial that they can actually inform our understanding of what is happening now.”
Saturday’s Süddeutsche Zeitung forced Gessen into another qualification when the interviewer noted how the Nazis herded Jews into ghettos – murdering those who survived disease and starvation – because they were Jews. Israel insists its war in Gaza is about eradicating Hamas, not all Palestinians.
“Yes, there are decisive differences, the conditions in Gaza and in the ghettos are considerably different,” conceded Gessen, whose grandfather was part of the Jewish council in a ghetto in Bialystok, in eastern Poland. “Comparison is not about equation,” the writer added, “but instead emphasises the differences.”
Even when Gessen’s essay emphasises differences, however, it is short-lived. While the Nazis invented justifications for their ghetto policy, Israel’s justification for walling-in Gaza “stems from actual and repeated acts of violence”. But Gessen moves on to compare again, adding: “Both claims propose that an occupying authority can choose to isolate, immiserate – and, now, mortally endanger – an entire population of people in the name of protecting its own.”
On Saturday, Gessen got the Hannah Arendt prize after all – but in a scaled-down ceremony, and with a sizeable police presence. In its report the left-wing Taz daily, a vocal Israel critic, described the writer’s acceptance speech, about the need to compare atrocities, as “valiant ... but not exactly convincing”.
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As the Gessen controversy ebbs, the question it raised remains unresolved: does German historical sensitivity entitle it to call out others – even Jewish descendants of Holocaust survivors – who criticise Israel and question the singularity of its Nazi-era horrors? For many, this is the wrong question.
“The real horror show that Gaza has become today needs no comparisons like that,” said my dinner host. “History will judge Israel harshly enough for this – on its own terms.”