'The silence on Gaza dramatically exposes a blind spot in our cultures of remembrance'
Once considered "world champions of mass crimes," Germans could, until October 7, 2023, pride themselves – as Holocaust historian Götz Aly put it – on being "world champions of commemoration." But as the war on Gaza continues, have they now become champions of willful blindness?
Although Germany's culture of remembrance has remained – following Theodor W. Adorno's 1966 essay Education After Auschwitz – of shaping enlightened citizens as guardians of democracy and the principle of "never again," this commitment has been tested in the face of current events. It took several months for Chancellor Friedrich Merz to "discover reality" and make unexpectedly clear statements on Gaza, according to Der Tagesspiegel on May 27. However, these remarks have so far remained purely rhetorical, with no accompanying action.
This disconnect between the idealized model of remembrance and current reality is not limited to Germany. In France, where the "duty of memory" has been a political and educational mantra since the 1980s, President Emmanuel Macron – himself shaped by Paul Ricœur (1913-2005) and his pursuit of a "just memory" – finally dared to criticize the "shameful" acts of Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government.
Yet euphemisms still prevail, with crimes whose genocidal nature grow more evident each day being referred to merely as a "tragedy," and the task of determining their legal qualification as genocide postponed to historians "in due time," despite the wealth of documentation – even under Israeli blockade. Several Israeli Holocaust historians, such as Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, and Daniel Blatman, have already described the situation of Palestinians in Gaza as genocide.
In the face of glaringly inadequate European reactions – with notable exceptions in Spain, Ireland, Norway, and Slovenia – we, as historians, question what memory policies can and cannot do, and what they have produced: a certain conformism, a tendency toward blindness and self-censorship, and political manipulation both domestically and internationally.
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