Pro-Palestinian rally at Buchenwald memorial shut down by German authoritiesGerman authorities have shut down a planned pro-Palestinian vigil at the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp memorial after a fierce outcry.
The rally was slated for April 12, marking the 81st anniversary of Buchenwald’s liberation by US troops. But the city of Weimar said on Monday it would ban the event on the memorial grounds and offered a square downtown as an alternate location.
Kufiyas in Buchenwald, the group behind the campaign, announced it was challenging the ban in court. The group said it aimed to “commemorate victims of genocide and fascism” and “uplift the fundamental duty to fight against all genocides, particularly the genocide currently taking place in Palestine.”
The planned event had been heavily criticized by German leaders, such as federal antisemitism czar Felix Klein. In an interview with the Jüdische Allgemeine, Klein said he viewed the rally as “disrespectful self-promotion and a perfidious attempt to relativize the murder of over 11,000 Jews in the Buchenwald concentration camp by comparing it to Israel’s actions in the recent Gaza war.”
The campaign was also protested in a joint statement by a coalition of 17 organizations, including several Jewish communal and academic groups. They accused the organizers of “instrumentalizing the Buchenwald memorial site as a platform for anti-Jewish agitation.”
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-891970
