Tachles

For German readers, here’s a short piece of mine, that appeared in this week’s Tachles, the Jewish weekly magazine of Switzerland.

It is about the use of earth, purportedly from the area of the Nazi concentration camps, to create a provocative reminder of what collaboration with right-wing extremism can lead to. The idea of the artists, who were behind this installation, was to warn against any pacts with Germany’s AfD party. There was an uproar and the artists apologised: The ashes of the victims should be allowed to rest in peace was the general view and especially the voices heard from German Jewish organisations.

I think that – if indeed, after so many years, the earth still had any leftover ashes ­ – this use, to provoke German society against right-wing xenophobia and racism, is the best that has happened to them in the last 75 years.