A New York writer who was due to receive a “political thought” award had his event suspended when his German sponsor pulled out following their essay comparing Gaza to a Nazi-era Jewish ghetto.
Masha Gessen, a Jew, was supposed to receive the Hannah Arendt Prize on Friday, but it was suspended until Saturday after the Heinrich Böll Foundation, criticized their latest work in the New Yorker.
Gessen, who uses the pronouns they/them, published a piece titled “In the Shadow of the Holocaust” last Friday, which touches on the basics, particularly a passage where the author compares the situation in Gaza to “Jewish ghettos in Occupied Europe.”
The famous magazine writer, 56, whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, wrote that the ghetto “has no prison guards” before saying that “Gaza is controlled not by the colonists, but by local forces.”
Masha Gessen, a Jew, was supposed to receive the Hannah Arendt Prize, but it was suspended after the Heinrich Böll Foundation criticized their latest work from the New Yorker. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP “This statement is not an offer for open discussion; it does not help to understand the conflict in the Middle East. This statement is unacceptable to us and we reject it,” said the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Heinrich Boll Foundation
The Heinrich Böll Foundation highlighted that quote when it issued a statement announcing that it would withdraw from the event, and “agree with the Bremen Senate,” where the ceremony was set to take place in Germany.
The organization accused the Russian-American writer of implying that “Israel aims to liquidate Gaza like a Nazi ghetto.”
“This statement is not an offer for open discussion; it does not help to understand the conflict in the Middle East. This statement is unacceptable to us and we reject it,” he wrote in a statement Wednesday.
On Monday, two founding members of the Hannah Arendt Prize — which honors the 20th-century Jewish political philosopher — called for the prize for political thought to be revoked in a letter to donors, citing Gessen’s work in the New Yorker, according to German newspaper Die Zeit.
Gessen wrote “In the Shadow of the Holocaust” last week and has drawn backlash for comparing the situation in Gaza to “Jewish ghettos in Occupied Europe.” Getty Images
Founding members Lothar Probst and Helga Trüpel said the author “removed himself [sic] with statements about the Middle East conflict in a way that would discredit everyone involved in the award ceremony, but especially the German-Jewish thinker Hannah Arendt.”
Gessen taken to X to deal with what they call “the chaos of the Arendt Prize.”
“You’d think, with all the attention on the Arendt Prize disaster, I’d be inundated with media calls/texts. You would be wrong. No German journalist was immediately reached for comment. A US journalist did. All reporting has occurred without input/response from me. Inaccuracies pile up
Later, they told the Washington Post that “the only way we can learn from history is if we compare it to the present. That is really our own tool. We are no smarter or better or more moral than people who lived 100 years ago. One “The only thing we have that they don’t is the awareness that the Holocaust could have happened and is still possible. It’s a lesson, not something complicated.”
The New York Post has reached out to Gessen for comment.
Despite the withdrawal, Gessen will still receive the award a day later in an unknown setting, according to Die Zeit.
The author — who began contributing to the New Yorker in 2014 and became a staff writer in 2017 — received the award for their work involving Russia and the US and the political landscape of both countries.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
