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Pro-Palestinian activists are banned from Buchenwald, where survivors vowed to fight for peace
(JTA) — As pro-Palestinian activists were shut out of the former Buchenwald concentration camp this weekend, a timeworn fight about the site’s history resurfaced.
That dispute, which dates back to the camp’s liberation in 1945, centers on how the victims of Buchenwald wanted to be remembered. The activists, a group called Kufiyas in Buchenwald, said their fight for Palestinians upheld a pledge made by thousands of Buchenwald survivors days after they were freed.
The inmates swore to punish the guilty, destroy Nazism and create a new world of peace. That promise, known as the “Oath of Buchenwald,” has been invoked by varying regimes and political movements ever since it was uttered.
Kufiyas in Buchenwald was blocked from holding a pro-Palestinian vigil at the Buchenwald memorial on Sunday after a court in the nearby city of Weimar upheld a police ban. The planned event would have marked the 81st anniversary of Buchenwald’s liberation by U.S. troops — and the day before the Jewish world observes Yom HaShoah, Holocaust memorial day.
Judges decided that the rally would likely “violate the dignity of victims” of the Nazis. The activists were offered the alternative of protesting in downtown Weimar, which they refused.
Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps on German soil, holding Jews along with political prisoners, Roma, gay people and prisoners of war. Roughly 56,000 people were killed there, among them some 11,000 Jews.
Kufiyas in Buchenwald argued that their protest would honor the memory of Buchenwald’s victims together with all “victims of genocide and fascism.” The campaign was formed after a German court ruled that Buchenwald could refuse entry to visitors who wear a Palestinian keffiyeh, which has been adopted by left-wing anti-Israel protesters. The memorial foundation argued that in some contexts, the symbol could be disruptive and undercut the memorial’s purpose. Its critics said the foundation was suppressing speech that criticized Israel — and fell in line with the mission of Holocaust remembrance.
By not addressing “the genocide in Gaza,” Kufiyehs in Buchenwald said the memorial became “a place of historical revisionism and genocide denial.”
The memorial site said that Kufiyas in Buchenwald were the ones abusing history.
“This is a completely inappropriate instrumentalization of the memory of the victims of National Socialism for one’s own political, misanthropic agenda,” Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau, a spokesperson for the memorial foundation, told the German broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. The planned rally was also excoriated by the European Jewish Congress, the Conference of European Rabbis and other groups.
Current-day atrocities have been invoked at Buchenwald before, according to William Niven, an emeritus professor of Nottingham Trent University who teaches German history.
In 1993, about 3,000 people demonstrated on the site against the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during the Holocaust, said in a speech, “Europe has learnt nothing since the Holocaust. Nothing was done to stop the murdering. What happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a posthumous victory for Hitler.”
But Niven said he viewed the planned pro-Palestinian rally as problematic because it would have interrupted the anniversary of the camp’s liberation, a program that annually draws descendants of Buchenwald victims and a dwindling number of survivors. That risked both upsetting the visitors and hijacking their mourning, he said.
“If you’ve got a group of people standing there with political placards or making political statements, then they are transforming that commemorative event into a political act,” Niven said. “They are using it because they’ll get media attention.”
Tair Borchardt, an organizer for the campaign who is Jewish, countered that the activists include a substantial proportion of Jews, among them children and grandchildren of Nazi victims. She said that drawing a direct line between Buchenwald inmates and the Palestinians was their form of commemoration.
“I think that honoring the victims of Nazi fascism also really should be principled in making sure that it doesn’t happen again,” said Borchardt. “And this is what’s happening right now. So drawing these connections, I don’t think it’s a contradiction in honoring the victims at all.”
Kufiyas in Buchenwald is a leftist alliance that includes activists from communist, anti-fascist and Jewish anti-Zionist organizations. The group collaborated in its campaign with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the German group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East.
Rachel Shapiro, an organizer with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, said in a statement that the memorial foundation’s “insistence on the singularity and exceptionalism of the Nazi genocide of European Jews” served to “actively provide cover for Germany’s participation in and funding of the mass murder of Palestinians.”
Shapiro argued that state-funded institutions like the Buchenwald memorial should not singularly decide how Nazi victims are remembered, saying that anti-fascist Jews “wholeheartedly reject the German state dictating conditions around commemoration.”
That is exactly what states do, according to James E. Young, a Holocaust scholar and professor emeritus of Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
“The irony is that by definition, in all national memorial sites everywhere, including Buchenwald, the state always dictates ‘the conditions of commemoration.’ That’s the point,” Young said in an interview.
Since the day Buchenwald was liberated, meanings of the place — and interpretations of what happened there — have shifted under changing regimes.
Kufiyas in Buchenwald said its demands from the memorial site were faithful to the Oath of Buchenwald, a pledge made by 21,000 survivors of the camp on April 19, 1945. That day, the freed inmates marched onto the roll call square and surrounded Buchenwald’s first memorial monument, a wooden obelisk made in the camp’s wood shop. They read a memorial address in Russian, Polish, German, French, Czech and English, ending with the jointly spoken oath.
“We will only give up the fight when the last guilty has been judged by the tribunal of all nations,” they said. “The absolute destruction of Nazism is our motto. The building of a new world of peace and freedom is our ideal.”
Just a few days later, the oath was revised. A new version swore to pursue the destruction of Nazism “down to its roots.” That addition had a clear meaning for communist survivors, a meaning solidified when Buchenwald came under Soviet-occupied East Germany: The “roots” of fascism were understood as capitalism and the West.
In 1958, the German Democratic Republic unveiled Buchenwald’s first state memorial, a path linking mass graves to a bell tower where the oath was inscribed.
“It was politicized during the GDR as an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-West message. Pretty much up to 1990, that’s how it was framed,” said Niven.
Buchenwald became a monument to the communist-led struggle and ultimate victory over fascism, a site symbolizing solidarity across national boundaries. For decades, wide gaps remained in this history, such as the Hitler-Stalin pact and the fate of Jewish inmates.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, Buchenwald was reconceptualized. In 1991, an independent historical commission recommended an array of changes, including emphasizing the concentration camp and installing memorials for groups that had not yet been commemorated.
A memorial was also installed for the “special camp” that the Soviets set up from 1945 to 1950. The regime used this camp to intern Nazis, along with numerous perceived enemies who were not Nazis. An estimated 7,000 people who died there were buried in a forest near the camp, their graves kept a state secret. Now, Nazis are remembered among the victims in mass graves.
In the 1990s and 2000s, a new doctrine shaped Germany’s memory of the past: its special responsibility to Israel. During the process of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” or reckoning with the Nazi era, the robustness of the State of Israel became key to Germany’s rehabilitation.
“Just as the Holocaust did justify the birth of the State of Israel, in Germany’s eyes, part of the reason for the memorial is to commemorate the reason that Jews must never be attacked again — or, there must never be another genocide of Jews, in particular,” said Young.
Still, the Oath of Buchenwald has been invoked throughout the 2000s with a globalized urgency. During the 70th anniversary of liberation in 2015, survivor Bertrand Herz pleaded with young people around the world to defend human rights and fight racism. As long as repression persisted in the world, he said, the oath would not be fulfilled.
That commemoration came in the midst of terrorist attacks on Jews in Europe and a Syrian refugee crisis that changed the makeup of Germany. Beside Herz, the politician Martin Schulz said Buchenwald’s victims left behind a moral compass to navigate these challenges. Their memory obligated Europe to “fight the return of demons that we thought were overcome but which still show their ugly face — racism, anti-Semitism, ultra-nationalism and intolerance,” said Schulz.
Kufiyas in Buchenwald is not the only group to object to the Buchenwald memorial in recent years. Thuringia, the state housing the memorial, is a stronghold for the far-right Alternative for Germany party. The party received 38.6% of the vote there in last year’s federal elections, more than in any other German state.
The leader of the AfD in Thuringia, Bjoern Hoecke, has urged Germany to break with its culture of repentance for Nazism. He has called Berlin’s Holocaust memorial a “monument of shame.” In 2021, AfD election posters in the Buchenwald parking lot advertised “courage to speak the truth.” The site has seen attacks from graffiti of swastikas to people cutting down trees planted in memory of survivors.
The AfD’s takeover of Thuringia in 2024 prompted an outcry from the International Committee Buchenwald-Dora and Kommados, founded in 1952 to preserve the memory of Buchenwald’s resistance.
“The ICBD thanks all the people in politics and civil society who fought fiercely in Thuringia and Saxony to defend our values — the values of the Buchenwald Oath,” the group said.
The AfD, predicted to surge in the region in September’s election, has presented an agenda to overhaul German life toward social conservatism and drive out immigrants and refugees.
Borchardt, the Kufiyas in Buchenwald organizer, said the memorial recently published a handout that placed images of a keffiyeh, a watermelon (a symbol of Palestinian solidarity) and the words “ceasefire now” next to swastikas, all shown as examples of antisemitism. She repudiated that comparison.
For her, there is no confusion in the Oath of Buchenwald, which she said “stands for itself.”
“It’s not very hard to understand that the current genocide happening in Palestine, the imprisonment of political prisoners — who are imprisoned, lots of them, without any court hearing or right to defend themselves — that this was probably meant by the Oath of Buchenwald, too,” said Borchardt.
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Minnesota’s Democratic nominee is an Israel critic – but she is not El-Sayed 2.0
(JTA) — Peggy Flanagan, the likely next senator from Minnesota, defeated a moderate pro-Israel congresswoman, accuses Israel of genocide and says she would oppose offensive weapons sales to Israel.
If the victory Tuesday of the state’s lieutenant governor over Rep. Angie Craig sounds like an echo of last week’s election in another midwestern state, Michigan, listen a little closer: Flanagan differs from Abdul El-Sayed in critical if subtle ways when it comes to Israel and Jews.
Flanagan has not joined El-Sayed and a number of left-wing challengers for Congress in saying that she would oppose U.S. funding for defensive weapons like the Iron Dome missile program.
Her platform says she would have joined the two incumbent Minnesota senators, Amy Klobuchar – who is running for governor, and whom she hopes to replace – and Tina Smith “in voting to halt offensive weapons sales to Israel.” That places her within the current Democratic mainstream: 40 out of 47 senators who caucus with the Democrats voted in April for the bill banning offensive weapons when it came up.
Her platform also calls for “a two-state solution which allows for a secure Israel and Palestinian self-determination.” El-Sayed will not commit to recognizing Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, or to a two-state solution.
The crisis moment in El-Sayed’s relationship with his state’s Jewish community came when he appeared to equivocate in condemning a violent attack on a Detroit area synagogue in March when pre-school was in session.
Flanagan was unequivocal: “Our Jewish communities are facing unprecedented levels of violence and threats,” she wrote then on social media. “It is on all of us to call anti-semitism out when we see and hear it, and to make sure that all of our faith communities are treated with respect. Hate brings no one more safety, more dignity, or more peace.”
She is equally as adamant when the threat is closer to home. In 2025, on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, a different synagogue called Temple Israel in Minneapolis was vandalized with graffiti in the shape of two inverted triangles — a symbol associated with Hamas — and reading “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’ name for its attack on Israel.
“Last night, Temple Israel in Minneapolis was defaced with anti-Semitic hate,” Flanagan wrote. “My heart is with the congregants of Temple Israel and our entire Jewish community. Hate has no home in Minnesota, and every house of worship should be a safe place to pray.”
There are things that Flanagan has done and said that nonetheless unsettled the pro-Israel community.
Some Jewish Democrats voiced concern to the Minnesota Star Tribune that Flanagan played into antisemitic tropes by singling out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in her campaign against Craig – a page out of El-Sayed’s playbook in defeating AIPAC-backed Rep. Haley Stevens, and the playbook of a number of progressive congressional candidates this year. During the lead-up to the primary, Flanagan was vocal about her opponent Craig’s support from the pro-Israel lobby, calling her “AIPAC’s candidate.”
A Flanagan spokesperson told the paper that she has “consistently condemned antisemitism and will continue standing with Jewish Minnesotans against hate.” Flanagan’s campaign did not return a request for comment.
Flanagan had the support of Israel-critical progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who authored the proposed ban on the sale of offensive weapons, and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Like them – and unlike Smith and Klobuchar – she has accused Israel of genocide.
She also drew the endorsement of progressive Jewish organization Bend the Arc.
“She is a close friend of the Twin Cities Jewish community and a trusted ally in the fight against antisemitism,” wrote Bend the Arc’s CEO, Jamie Beran. “She understands that Jewish safety is bound up with the safety and freedom of all our neighbors.”
Now, Flanagan will take on Republican nominee Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter who has expressed support for Israel and its war with the U.S. in Iran. Minnesota has not elected a Republican U.S. Senator since 2002. Flanagan is favored to win in a state which has trended increasingly blue in recent years.
Flanagan also says she will not support New York’s Chuck Schumer if he chooses to seek another term as party leader in the Senate. Schumer is a pro-Israel stalwart.
Republicans, who control the Senate, have unanimously voted against Sanders’ resolutions, rendering them essentially symbolic tools for Democrats to voice disapproval of the Israeli government. If progressive Israel critics like El-Sayed and Troy Jackson in Maine win in November and help flip the Senate — and especially if Schumer gives up leadership — the pathway to blocking weapons sales to Israel would become clearer than ever.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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‘History cannot be erased’: ‘Hostages Square’ in Tel Aviv is formalized in official name change
(JTA) — The plaza that became the center of Israel’s campaign to bring home the 251 captives Hamas seized on Oct.7, 2023 is now formally called “Hostages Square,” establishing a permanent reminder of the more than two-year struggle that ended with the return of the final hostage in January.
Mayor Ron Huldai unveiled new signage at the plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art on Wednesday, formally adopting the name Israelis had used for the site for close to three years.
Hostage families and their supporters gathered at the square for mass rallies, weekly Shabbat gatherings, vigils and public events demanding the release of those held in Gaza. The plaza was also filled with crowds celebrating as hostages returned home.
“History cannot be erased, and we must not allow it to be forgotten,” Huldai said at the unveiling. “The decision to name this place ‘Hostages Square’ is intended to ensure that this chapter in the history of the State of Israel, from October 7, 2023 until the return of the final hostage, Ran Gvili, on January 26, 2026, will be remembered for generations.”
The formal designation settles a debate over whether or not the site’s role in one of the more significant events in Israel history should be remembered or erased.
After a deal was announced in October 2025 to free the remaining living hostages, Dani Miran, whose son Omri spent 738 days in Hamas captivity, personally urged Huldai to rename the plaza “Returnees Square.” Other proposals included “Heroes Square” and names emphasizing unity, while relatives of hostages whose bodies were still being held in Gaza argued that the existing name should remain until everyone was returned.
The last hostage, police officer Ran Gvili, was returned to Israel on Jan. 26 after his remains were recovered in Gaza. The following day, the clock in Hostages Square that had counted the time since Oct. 7 was stopped after 844 days.
The site still carries a political charge: In July, protesters met at the square to call for an official inquiry into the lapses that facilitated the Oct. 7 attacks, something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fiercely resisted. The alleged failures of the day have become an issue ahead of Oct. 27 elections.
Rebecca Geller, who handled international communications for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum and spent much of the war alongside hostage families at the square, said she was glad the name was being formally preserved.
“Whatever the space will be in the future, it will be important to honour” what it meant during the war, she said. “It gave the families a place to come to feel the support of the community, to get out of the house and to be nourished through the worst times of their lives, body and soul.”
By July, Tel Aviv’s municipal naming committee had backed Huldai’s proposal to make “Hostages Square” the plaza’s official name, saying it had become a national symbol of solidarity and the campaign to return the captives. Until then, the site was officially known as the plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art despite “Hostages Square” becoming its universally recognized name.
“This was the site of a courageous and determined struggle led by families who did everything they could to bring their loved ones home,” Huldai said. “Tel Aviv-Yafo had the privilege of being their home, and together with residents of the city and people from across Israel, this square became a center of solidarity, mutual responsibility and an unwavering demand: bring them all home.”
“This square will remain a testament to the families, to their struggle and to the commitment never to give up on anyone. We will not allow this story to be forgotten.”
The square may now be permanent, but Google has yet to get the memo: as of Thursday, its Maps listing marked Hostages Square as “permanently closed.”
Geller said the square remains a difficult place to visit.
“I struggle to return there – even when I’m just going to the art museum – because it always brings up the emotion that was held there,” she said. “For me, it will always be Hostages Square.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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War and uncertainty drives Israelis seeking quiet abroad
(JTA) — When Iris Meiri-Snir moved from Israel to northern Italy last month, she gave up a job she loved, proximity to her children and grandchildren, and the social and professional ties she had built over a lifetime.
She and her husband, Hagai Agmon-Snir, left for their home in Mevaseret Zion, an explicitly ideological choice that places them among a growing number of Israelis building their lives elsewhere.
Meiri-Snir was vice principal at a leading Jerusalem high school, while Agmon-Snir, a neuroscientist, spent decades working on coexistence initiatives involving Palestinians, Haredim, LGBTQ Israelis and other communities. As the country pushed right-ward, they found themselves increasingly on the fringe.
“Leaving is our way of expressing our opposition,” he said, adding that he would encourage others who felt the same way to do likewise.
For years, the couple belonged to the optimistic camp that believed Israeli society could still return to the liberal values they upheld. By the time they decided to move to Arona, a town on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, that conviction had disappeared. Despite their comfortable lives in Israel, they no longer felt they could justify staying.
They have been public about their journey out of their homeland, speaking with JTA and Israel’s Channel 11. “If I ignore all the political and social crap happening around me, what do I have to complain about here?” he told the Kan public broadcaster in an interview filmed before the couple left Israel. “We’ve got it pretty good.”
“But it’s no longer possible to be part of what’s happening here,” he added, arguing that a “fascist current” in Israel had moved into the mainstream.
The Snirs are not alone. A Tel Aviv University study showed that Israeli immigration has remained at record levels, with an estimated 40,000 and 50,000 citizens exiting for at least a year in each of the past three years, a record run of emigration that began amid the political upheaval of 2023. Itcontinued through the wars that followed the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that year.
The authors of the study said the current numbers do not yet pose a significant economic or security risk, but warned that could change if emigration continues to rise. They pointed to what they called a “dangerous” increase in the so-called brain drain, or the departure of highly educated, high-earning Israelis. A separate Israel Tax Authority study found that emigrants’ incomes before leaving were about 50% higher than the national average, with doctors and engineers disproportionately represented.
The movement, however, is not all in one direction. More than 22,500 new immigrants arrived in Israel in 2025, including about 8,500 from Western countries such as the United States, France, Britain and Canada. Overall aliyah fell by about a third, largely because of a steep decline in arrivals from Russia, but immigration from several Western countries rose: French aliyah more than tripled between 2023 and 2025, while North American immigration also increased.
For some of those newcomers, the same wars and upheaval that have helped drive Israelis abroad have instead strengthened their desire to live in Israel, where they seek solidarity with a people under siege. More than 2,300 North American Jews were planning to move to Israel this summer, about 15% more than in recent years, according to Nefesh B’Nefesh, which facilitates aliyah.
Across social media, dozens of groups cater to Israelis considering emigration, a move known as yerida — the inverse of aliyah — though native-born Israelis more commonly use the English loanword “relocation.” In one English-speaking Facebook group, members cited security fears, repeated wars, financial instability, the high cost of living and dissatisfaction with the education system.
For new arrivals to Israel some of the pressures are particular to life as an immigrant. People in the group described struggling with the language, the absence of family nearby and, particularly among Europeans, frustration with a welfare system they felt offered far less help than their native countries during illness, unemployment or other crises.
One woman posting said she had become disillusioned with the aliyah dream she felt had been sold to her by the Zionist Federation, but later softened that criticism, telling JTA in a private message that the organization had done “so much good” for her family and that she had written the post while angry about the war.
Ishai, originally from San Francisco and now exploring a move to Prague, said the cost of living and “endless and pointless wars” were part of why he wanted to leave. His disillusionment with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians began during his military service in the West Bank and intensified after Oct. 7. Like Agmon-Snir, he used the word “fascist” to describe what he sees taking hold in Israeli society. Most Israelis, he said, have “zero ambition for a better place in any meaningful way.”
“They either worship Bibi or think he’s the source of all the problems,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his nickname.
With elections approaching, Ishai, who asked to be identified only by his first name because “this kind of talk could get me killed or at least fired,” said he saw little prospect of change at the ballot box.
“They all proclaim the exact same policies,” he said. Yair Golan, the former deputy IDF chief who leads the left-wing Democrats party, was the only major politician saying anything “even remotely towards peace,” Ishai said, though in his view Golan still advocated ruling Palestinians “with an iron fist.”
Anna Lukatsky, a Jaffa-based stylist and content creator, is moving to the Greek island of Paros for seven months after the High Holidays. The political climate played a role in the decision, she said, but was far from the determining factor, and she deliberately chooses not to dwell on it. “I have nothing to say politically beyond what has already been said.”
Oct. 7 did, however, reinforce a feeling that she should stop putting off the life she wanted. “There is never a good time to fulfill a dream. When things are good, it’s not a good time, and when things are bad, you can’t,” she said. “Anything can happen. Now is the time to live.”
She is going with her two daughters, 15 and 16, and their father — her longtime partner — whom she married only two weeks ago in an online Utah ceremony, mainly to help secure a European visa. Practical questions such as schooling and what comes next do not appear to trouble her much. Her daughters, both musicians, are not enrolled in school in Greece but will continue music lessons over Zoom. She seemed equally unfazed by what would happen to the belongings they leave behind.
“Who cares about a sofa or a plate when I’m moving to Paros?”
Beyond Paros, she has no fixed plans for what the family will do next — and where — only “plenty of dreams still to fulfill.”
While Israeli communities have formed in other Greek destinations such as Thessaloniki, Lukatsky said she was not seeking one out in Paros.
“I see myself by the sea in Greece, financially secure, writing my book, with time for my family,” she said.
Several weeks after moving to Arona, Meiri-Snir said life had become “very busy,” much of it socially. She and Agmon-Snir are part of a local circle of Israelis who meet regularly for dinners and other gatherings, while also spending time with a wider group of mostly European expats who meet each week for lunch. So far, she said, they have no regrets about the move.
Meiri-Snir described the reception from locals as uniformly warm, and said the couple were already recognized at local establishments.
“We don’t hide that we’re from Israel,” she told JTA over WhatsApp. People sometimes greet them with “shalom” or tell them they hope things will be all right in Israel.
“We haven’t felt any antisemitism at all,” she said.
Meiri-Snir was careful not to generalize from their experience. “I’m not trying to erase other people’s experiences of antisemitism,” she said, adding that she expected the atmosphere could be different in larger cities such as Milan or Bologna.
“Here it’s an area of small towns and villages, and the atmosphere is different,” she said. “
People are mostly concerned with their own affairs, and the attitude toward us here has been very pleasant and positive. That might surprise Israelis.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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