German Memorials Reveal Clash Between Holocaust Guilt and Anti-Zionism

Germany is known for a strong state-level commitment to atoning for its Holocaust past, manifested through formal ceremonies, museums, and monuments. At the same time, in a seemingly growing trend, the extremist anti-Israel analogy of the Israeli government to the Nazi regime can often outweigh Germans’ Holocaust guilt.

Earlier this summer, a debate engulfed the German city of Munich over whether to embed the “Stolpersteine”— plaques naming Holocaust victims that are also known as “stumbling block” memorials — into street sidewalks. In July, Munich’s city council voted to ban the memorials due to complaints that stepping on such stones would be an insult to Holocaust victims.

According to reports, some representatives of the Stolpersteine initiative, which exists in multiple other German cities, have exhibited anti-Israel sentiment. For instance, in the city of Kassel, one organizer said in 2014 that “death is a master today from Israel” and that there should be “stumbling blocks” for murdered Palestinians.

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Benjamin Weinthal, a fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed this month that German Holocaust memorials have taken “bizarre new directions.”

“Like other Holocaust memorials, the Stolpersteine project also functions, one can argue, as a kind of phony resistance to Germany’s Nazi past. … There are no memorials in Germany for Palestinian, Hezbollah, and Iranian lethal anti-Semitism committed against Jews and Israelis. When an attempt was made years ago to show Israeli victims in train stations, there was an uproar and the plan was quashed.”

The trend, he wrote, marks a “fitting update” to the famous sarcastic quote from Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex that “the Germans will never forgive the Israelis for Auschwitz.”

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