A pro-Palestinian group is planning a protest at the Buchenwald Memorial, the former Nazi concentration camp site in Weimar, Germany, according to a report from Israeli media outlet Ynetglobal. The demonstration is scheduled to coincide with the April 11 ceremony marking the camp’s liberation by Allied forces in 1945. More than 56,000 prisoners died at Buchenwald during World War II.
Ynet reported that the scheduled protest, dubbed “Keffiyehs in Buchenwald” by its organizers, follows an incident last year in which a visitor wearing a keffiyeh was denied entry to the memorial.
Israeli journalist Hen Mazzig claimed on X, “It was later reported that the visitor was affiliated with an organization that had praised Hamas and the October 7 massacre.”
Mazzig noted, “A memorial site is not the place to protest Israel’s policies. Jews at Buchenwald were murdered for being Jews, before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even existed. Second, commemorating 56,000 murdered prisoners should not be turned into a performative protest about keffiyehs.
“Families come to pay their respects, not to hear fake activists shouting about anti-Israel symbols inside Buchenwald,” he wrote, adding that “it is neither the place nor the time.”
I think most of us can agree with Mazzig’s sentiments.
Israeli media outlet Israel Hayom reported that the planned protest “has sparked outrage in Berlin.” Officials describe it as “an assault on the dignity of the victims’ memory.”
Among those involved are the student wing of Germany’s Left Party (Die Linke), the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East and the German Communist Party (DKP).The groups accuse the memorial’s management of “spreading Israeli propaganda” and of not being “hostile enough toward Israel.”
This planned protest would not be unprecedented. In May 2024, pro-Palestinian activists staged a demonstration at the Auschwitz Memorial as thousands gathered for the March for the Living ceremony. Held each year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the event brings participants in a silent procession from Auschwitz to the crematoria of Birkenau to honor those murdered by the Nazi regime. In 2024, marchers also commemorated the victims of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre.
The president of a Palestinian group in Poland that protested the March for the Living told the Associated Press, “Through this protest we want to say that we bow down to the victims of the Holocaust too. At the same time, we demand an end to war, an end to genocide.”
At any rate, the memorial’s managers can scarcely be criticized for turning away a keffiyeh-clad visitor. He was literally wearing the most familiar symbol of the pro-Palestinian movement around his neck.
I would argue that the vast majority of pro-Palestinian protesters don’t actually care about the Palestinians and that many lack a clear understanding of the complex history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many will remember the videos of activists who, when questioned by reporters, could not name the river or the sea they were chanting about.
Although I have never visited the Buchenwald Memorial, I have been to Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau in Poland. They remain the most haunting places I have ever witnessed. Nothing else compares.
Seventy years had passed since the camps were liberated, yet the pain and suffering of the more than one million people murdered there could still be felt. The atmosphere was stark and desolate — devoid of life. Even the birds, it seemed, had not returned.
At its core, the staged agitation at Buchenwald will serve only to inflame antisemitism and defile the sanctity of a site dedicated to Holocaust remembrance.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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