Israel Matzav

Have they no shame?

The director of the Buchenwald Holocaust Memorial has told a New York theater director that the Jews should have set up their state in Uganda and not in Israel.

Israeli-born author Tuvia Tenenbom has called for the dismissal of Volkhard Knigge, the head of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial in Weimar, Germany, after alleging that Knigge told him that Jews should have settled in Uganda instead of establishing the State of Israel.

Tenenbom, the director of the Jewish Theater of New York, described Knigge's anti-Israel remarks in an interview on Sunday with the regional daily paper Mitteldeutsche Zeitung.
Tenenbom wrote a 2011 book on his observation of modern anti-Semitism in Germany. The book, I Sleep in Hitler's Room: An American Jew Visits Germany, describes his experiences with diverse forms of anti-Semitism in Germany and includes an interview with Knigge and Daniel Gaede, an educator at Buchenwald.

"Volkhard goes on and on... He even recommends a bar in Jerusalem, one he really likes: Uganda. Free-minded people are there, he tells me. Uganda? Why Uganda? That's an allusion to that old idea. He refers to the idea that Jews should have settled in Uganda instead of Palestine. Uganda, the bar, made a name for itself as a place that sympathizes with the Palestinian plight," Tenenbom recalled.

"Why the director of the Buchenwald memorial gets his hands wet in the Israeli-Palestinian mess is beyond my understanding," Tenenbom wrote.

In an email response to The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, Knigge wrote, "Mr. Tenenbom's description of the work carried out by the Buchenwald memorial is absurd and devoid of all reality. Mr. Tenenbom reproduces the conversations he held with me and the head of the memorial education department in distorted form. I never at any time said that Jews should have been settled in Uganda. Nor is the T-shirt from the Uganda Bar in Jerusalem a propaganda T-shirt," Knigge wrote.

"The Uganda Bar is an establishment which presents artistic events and is very popular among young Israelis. I enjoyed going to that bar with my Israeli wife of many years, who is herself an artist. The bar is near her mother's flat; they serve good humous there and play interesting music."

In an email to the Post on Tuesday, Dr. Clemens Heni, a leading German academic expert on contemporary anti-Semitism in the Federal Republic, wrote, "It is a scandal that the head of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial and a recipient of the Heinz-Galinski award supports the Uganda Bar" in Jerusalem. This bar believes the idea is better that Jews should settle in Uganda than in the State of Israel. Knigge embodies the view of many Germans who mourn dead Jews but attack living Jews." Tenenbom was equally critical of Gaede, describing him as being "no better" than Knigge.

Read the whole thing. 

I am not familiar with the Uganda bar, but 67 years after the Holocaust it is clear that many Germans think that they an act like nothing happened on the very same ground where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered by these Germans' parents and grandparents. And why not? No one else in the world feels guilty about murdering Jews. Ask the 'Palestinians.'

Labels: Germany, Holocaust

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:55 AM