{"id":14939,"date":"2026-05-16T10:41:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T10:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/14939\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T10:41:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T10:41:11","slug":"germany-allows-pro-palestinian-encampment-in-park-where-nazis-deported-jews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/14939\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany allows pro-Palestinian encampment in park where Nazis deported Jews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Activists in Hamburg are commemorating the displacement of Palestinians this week in a park where Jews were deported during World War II<\/a>, following a legal fight that ended in their favor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A German court allowed the \u201cBridges of Resistance\u201d encampment to be set up from May 9 until Saturday in Moorweide, a public park where, according to the Hamburg Memorials Foundation, the Nazis<\/a> rounded up more than 1,000 local Jews for deportation to the Lodz ghetto in October 1941.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The encampment will culminate on Saturday with a march from the park to Hamburg\u2019s port, the organizers announced. The demonstration will be part of nationwide protests marking 78 years since the Nakba, the Arabic word for \u201ccatastrophe\u201d used by Palestinians<\/a> to describe their flight and expulsion from their homes when Israel was established in 1948.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Bridges of Resistance spokesperson, Nikodem Kaddoura, told the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung that the encampment\u2019s location was deliberate. Commemorating the displacement of Palestinians on a site where Jews were forced from their homes was not a \u201cprovocation,\u201d said Kaddoura, but a choice pointing to historical \u201ccontinuities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The encampment triggered an outcry from local Jews, who reportedly said in an open letter that its location constituted \u201ca mockery of the victims\u201d of the Holocaust<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The chief rabbi of Hamburg, Shlomo Bistritzky, urged local authorities to take action against the encampment and said on X\/Twitter, \u201cWe \u2013 the Jews of Hamburg \u2013 are deeply concerned about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city and police initially sought to relocate the protest last week, but after the organizers appealed, Hamburg courts ruled that it could continue.<\/p>\n

Court: Insufficient antisemitism risk for ban<\/p>\n

Hamburg\u2019s Higher Administrative Court determined that the Bridges of Resistance camp did not pose sufficient danger or risk of antisemitic incidents to justify a ban, according to regional broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk.<\/p>\n

The encampment in the southern part of Moorweide is not located in the same area as the historical deportation site in the park\u2019s northwestern corner, according to Die Tageszeitung. The \u201cSquare of Jewish Deportees\u201d is marked with a memorial plaque. It is separated from the encampment by the University of Hamburg’s main building.<\/p>\n

The encampment includes over 10 tents and dozens of participants, with a schedule listing lectures and workshops about Palestinian history and culture, boycotts against Israel, and what the activists identify as \u201cGerman complicity\u201d in genocide against the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

The organizers also said Hamburg was a key location for protesting because its port was a \u201cprime example of Germany\u2019s role in the global arms trade.\u201d Pro-Palestinian activists have previously targeted Hamburg\u2019s port to protest arms shipments to Israel.<\/p>\n

Bridges of Resistance did not respond to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

About 150 counterprotesters rallied against the encampment on Sunday, local media reported. Some held a sign that read, \u201cThere is no place for antisemitism and hatred of Israel in Hamburg.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stefan Hensel, Hamburg\u2019s former antisemitism commissioner, said on Facebook that \u201cmany in Hamburg consider the anti-Israel agitation again taking place there, of all places, as political and moral bankruptcy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hensel added that some of the activists were \u201caccused of holding antisemitic and extremist positions.\u201d One group involved in the encampment, Thawra Hamburg, is under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany\u2019s domestic intelligence agency, according to attorneys working on the group\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

Members of the Jewish community demanded in an open letter that \u201cHamburg\u2019s politicians clearly distance themselves from the camp, end the open hatred against Israel and Jews, and permanently recognize Moorweide as a protected memorial site.\u201d<\/p>\n

For all of Moorweide to be permanently insulated from protests, it would have to meet the requirements of Germany\u2019s Assembly Act, which includes a provision limiting the right to free assembly. The provision says memorial sites of \u201coutstanding historical significance extending beyond the regional level\u201d receive special protection to \u201cprotect the dignity of the victims of National Socialist violence and arbitrary rule.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hamburg court\u2019s ruling likely rested on the fact that only part of Moorweide is designated as a memorial site, according to William Nevin, a German history professor emeritus of Nottingham Trent University.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf one accepts that the protestors were not intending to demonstrate in the section of the park dedicated to the memory of those deported, or otherwise act in a disrespectful or antisemitic manner, then the court\u2019s ruling can be understood,\u201d Nevin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s Holocaust remembrance sites have become the center of fierce dispute between pro-Palestinian activists and state authorities.<\/p>\n

German politicians have publicly reckoned with the country\u2019s Nazi past by promising a special responsibility to Israel. Since the 2000s, many have identified the robustness of the Israeli state as part of Germany\u2019s \u201cStaatsraison,\u201d or reason of state. Germany is a staunch ally of Israel and its second-largest arms supplier after the United States.<\/p>\n

In April, the city of Weimar blocked a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the former Buchenwald concentration camp on the anniversary of its liberation, and a local court upheld the ban.<\/p>\n

Judges decided that the Buchenwald rally would likely \u201cviolate the dignity of victims\u201d of the Nazis. The activists argued that their planned rally was a vigil for all \u201cvictims of genocide and fascism,\u201d saying they upheld the memory of the Holocaust by urging Germany not to be involved in another genocide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Activists in Hamburg are commemorating the displacement of Palestinians this week in a park where Jews were deported…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3647,5271,5,4807,8642,20107],"class_list":{"0":"post-14939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-antisemitism","9":"tag-antizionism","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-holocaust","12":"tag-nazis","13":"tag-pro-palestinian-groups"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}