(Jewish Group) Germany: Series of attacks on memorial sites sparks concern
Antisemitism, racism, homophobia – attacks on memorial sites in Germany are becoming increasingly frequent. They are acts of aggression against democracy and hatred against minorities. What connects these acts?Several attacks on memorial sites within a timespan of only two weeks have shocked Germany: A suspected antisemitic attack on a mini library at the "Platform 17" memorial in Berlin on August 12. An attack on the tent at the Ohlsdorf Peace Festival, held in a cemetery where the victims of Second World War bombings in Hamburg are remembered. An arson attempt on the monument in Berlin's Tiergarten park, which commemorates the homosexual persons who were persecuted during the Nazi regime. Smashed windows at the headquarters of the Foundation for Memorials in Lower Saxony. Vandalism of the offices of a lesbian women's group in the Berlin district of Neukölln.
"When I first learned of the attack on our BücherboXX (book box) I cried for a whole hour," Konrad Kutt told DW. "It felt as if it were a physical attack on me," he added, close to tears.
Kutt had the idea for the book boxes, which are located throughout Berlin, about 15 years ago. They are disused telephone boxes that have been transformed into mini streetside libraries. The BücherboXX closest to the "Platform 17" memorial is especially significant, in his view, because of its historical location and the contents of the box. The books that were burned in the August attack - about 300 of them - focused on the deportations and systematic murders of Jews during the Nazi era.
About 50,000 Jews were deported to concentration and extermination camps from Platform 17 of the Grünewald train station as part of the Holocaust, the Nazis' campaign to exterminate Jewish people and many other minorities. The recent attack is particularly chilling as it carries echoes of the book burning at Berlin's Bebelplatz public square, where the Nazis set fire to more than 20,000 books that they considered "un-German" and "degenerate" on May 10, 1933 as they prepared to carry out the Holocaust. At that site now stands an underground memorial by sculptor Micha Ullmann, as well as a nearby plaque with a quote from 18th-century German writer Heinrich Heine, reading: "That was just a prelude. Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too."
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