German court allows anti-Israel encampment in Hamburg park where Nazis deported Jews |
JTA — Activists in Hamburg are commemorating the displacement of Palestinians this week in a park where Jews were deported during World War II, following a legal fight that ended in their favor.
A German court allowed the “Bridges of Resistance” encampment to be set up from May 9 until Saturday in Moorweide, a public park where, according to the Hamburg Memorials Foundation, the Nazis rounded up more than 1,000 local Jews for deportation to the Łódź ghetto in October 1941.
The encampment will culminate on Saturday with a march from the park to Hamburg’s port, the organizers announced. The demonstration will be part of nationwide protests marking 78 years since the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe” used by Palestinians to describe their flight and expulsion from their homes when Israel was established in 1948.
A Bridges of Resistance spokesperson, Nikodem Kaddoura, told the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung that the encampment’s location was deliberate. Commemorating the displacement of Palestinians on a site where Jews were forced from their homes was not a “provocation,” said Kaddoura, but a choice pointing to historical “continuities.”
The encampment triggered an outcry from local Jews, who reportedly said in an open letter that its location constituted “a mockery of the victims” of the Holocaust.
The chief rabbi of Hamburg, Shlomo Bistritzky, urged local authorities to take action against the encampment and said on X, “We – the Jews of Hamburg – are deeply concerned about this.”
The city and police initially sought to relocate the protest last week, but after the organizers appealed, Hamburg courts ruled that it could continue.
Hamburg’s 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.
The encampment in the southern part of Moorweide is not located in the same area as the historical........