On the 26th of September, after a long but interesting reading tour, I finally came back to a rainy, dark skipsted. This trip, which had begun on August 25, had followed an equally long tour in June/July, with the highlight of the PEN Festbuch presentation in the former courtroom 600 of the Nuremberg court building. That had been extremely memorable.
Many times I have stayed in Osnabrück, but rarely twice in one year, and this year, after a first visit in the spring at the time of the impressive peace demonstration at the beginning of the war of aggression against Ukraine, now in September I was even given the special honor of putting my name in the Golden Book of the City of Peace!
Ruth Weiss had so much to tell about topics that are so important to us’ – commented students impressed after their encounter with Ruth Weiss at the Angell Montessori School Centre. At the Kepler Gymnasium in Freiburg, she also left behind enthusiastic young people who quickly got an autograph in her autobiography ‘Wege im harten Gras’. The press echo confirmed these impressions – see Badische Zeitung of 13.7. about the encounter with a woman who seeks intergenerational dialogue and knows how to share her rich experiences in a targeted manner.
Many guests accepted the invitation of the Exile Archive of the DNB, the PEN Center of German-speaking Authors Abroad and the RWG to attend the honor, organized as part of the Frankfurt Days of Exile.
Dr. Sylvia Asmus, head of the German Exile Archive of the DNB, welcomed the festive community to the place of persecution and crime, pain of expulsion and homecoming movingly documented – it was an honor to receive the contemporary witness right here.
Lest we forget!
Words easily uttered and often forgotten. Nonetheless, the eleven athletes and the German policeman, who lost their lives during the attack of Palestinian Terrorists on Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympic Games on the 5th September 1972, were never forgotten in Israel or by Jews worldwide. Most of them were killed during the murderous event as a result of a failed police rescue attack at Fliegerhorst Fürstenfeldbruck.
Few outside South Africa remembered on August 12th this year the tenth anniversary of the Massacre of Marikana.
On that day in 2012, police officers at the Marikana platinum mine near Rustenburg owned by Lonmin, shot 112 striking miners, killing 34 men. The police had claimed they had to defend themselves, when they had been unable to control the men.
At a press conference on August 17th, the Palestinian President Mahmut Abbas spoke with the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz about “50 Holocausts committed by Israel against Palestinians”. Olaf Scholz should have reacted immediately and strongly, rather than ending the press conference, regardless of whether he angered the guest. How could the Chancellor not immediately contradict this statement, allowing it to remain in the room!
It is not the first time Kenyan elections have made headlines, following the historic days of the strong rule of President Jomo Kenyatta at Independence in 1964, when the election had divided the people ethnically into parties between Kenyatta’s Kikuyu-dominated Kanu Party and the Luo. In 1969 one-party rule followed, with Kanu winning every election until 1988, beyond Kenyatta’s death in 1978. Multi-parties were restored in 1992.