Buchenwald: Memorial head talks about scandal about “genocide” saying

The commemoration on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the former Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald was overshadowed by several conflicts. At first pressure from the Israeli embassy, ​​the memorial postponed the planned speech of the Jewish philosopher Omri Boehm. On Sunday, a speaker described the approach of the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip as a “genocide” during the official memorial event on the former concentration camp.

In both cases, Jens-Christian Wagner was the director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau Dora Mittelbauen Foundation between the parties to the conflict. The star talked to him about it.

Professor Wagner, a young woman has in the Holocaust commemoration in Beech forest Israel of the genocide. How could that happen?
The woman was a participant in a youth project of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee. The memorial had to do it very indirectly.

So you didn’t know what was planned?
We were given the text of the planned explanation in advance. But the last part was not there with the alleged genocide in the Gaza Strip. Otherwise we would not have agreed to the performance. We were deceived here. Apparently it was a spontaneous action by the woman. The committee then apologized in all form.

The young woman, a Spaniard, not only spoke of a “genocide” on the Palestinians, but also called “¡No Pasarán” …
… which is even completely unexcused. She called in English: “We are fighting the genocide in Palestine”, followed by the call “¡No Pasarán”. As is well known, the battle cry was anti -fascist resistance fighter in the Spanish Civil War. It is roughly translated: “You can’t get through!” That was an anti -Semitic assault – in this place and on this day. Because that can only be interpreted as “the Jews come by”. I spontaneously went to the microphone and distanced myself very clearly on behalf of the memorial.

The question of what is anti -Semitic and what has not led to a political scandal before the event: they had to unload a planned speaker again. How big is the damage?
The conflict of Omri Boehm’s speech overshadowed this anniversary in advance. That still makes me very sad with a view to the last survivors. The state government and we as a memorial had invited Mr. Boehm together because, as a German-Israeli, as an internationally renowned philosopher and as a grandson of a Holocaust survivor, he offers a differentiated and at the same time authentic perspective. The speech script, has it very clearly shows that the allegations against him have drawn on the hair. He wrote a clever, carefully weighed text – and expressed very, very clearly against any relativization of the Holocaust. The way it was to be expected.

Boehm described Jerusalem as a “golden calf” and Yad Vashem as the “washing machine” of a racist policy of Israel. The Israeli ambassador therefore accuses him of watering down the Holocaust commemoration. Is he not right?
Omri Boehm is a controversial but always well -founded scientist. This accusation is politically motivated. In general, the entire debate about Israel and Palestine is guided and exploited from all sides so bitterly that it is now completely poisoned. There is hardly a sentence left to be said without being immediately suspected of one or the other. Either one is considered a supporter of Hamas and an anti -Semite. Or you are referred to as the salivation of a right -wing extremist government of Israel. Like Omri Boehm, I am neither one nor the other.

What sentences would you say?
That Israel’s right to exist must not be questioned. That we are solidarity with people who were victims of the Hamas massacre and still suffer from the Hamas attacks in Israel. And that at the same time it is correct if we criticize the disproportionate warfare through a government’s right-wing extremist government-without drawing the Holocaust relativizing genocide analogies without ahistoric and historical policy. The debate takes place not only as part of the war in Gaza, but also in the context of global development. Authoritarian and right -wing extremist governments put pressure on the liberal democracies worldwide. And they use history policy as a weapon.

Examples?
Take Putin’s propaganda with which he founded the invasion of Ukraine. Take Trump’s latest decree to ban so -called un -American content from museums. Or take Benjamin Netanyahu. Most recently, the Israeli government invited the crème de la crème of right-wing extremists from Europe to an anti-Semitism conference in Jerusalem. Among them were well-known Holocaust-ply.

Does the history-political cultural struggle also have to do with the fact that there are hardly any survivors of the Nazi terror?
This is a central point. At the latest when the last survivors have died, the door and gate are open to the instrumentalization of the Nazi crimes. You can then no longer defend yourself against your capture. This is a development that we have been seeing for some time and that will reinforce.

What to do?
It is all the more important that we drive a scientifically based, serious and critical examination of the Nazi crimes from the memorials-and clearly say when attempts are made by third parties to trivialize, deny or instrumentalize. But this work is getting more and more difficult.