Professor Esra Özyürek has written an opinion piece for the Austrian German-language newspaper, Der Standard.
Drawing on her fieldwork among German Muslims (published in Subcontractors of Guilt, 2023), Özyürek explains how Germany’s focus on Muslims in the prevention of anti-Semitism shifts the problem onto a minority. The lessons of the Holocaust belong to everyone, she observes.
From the article (translated):
“Germany's post-war identity – and to some extent the broader European identity – is based on atonement for the crimes of the Holocaust and the teachings of empathy, tolerance and democracy. Especially since reunification, the German state has invested heavily in building a common culture of remembrance and a canon of values associated with it. Despite its commitment to anti-racism, however, the German culture of remembrance failed to include members of society who are not ethnically German.
“This exclusion from the founding narrative of German post-war society was not a failure, but a calculated step: convinced that only an ethnically homogeneous identity could secure German responsibility for the Holocaust, the founders and defenders of the German culture of remembrance regarded groups such as the German-Muslim population as outsiders and thus irrelevant to the efforts of democratization after 1945.”
Read the full article (in German): “Erinnerung darf kein Doppelstandard sein” (via derStandard.at).
The opinion piece is already attracting lively online debate in the comments.
Over recent months Professor Özyürek has addressed public audiences in Austria, Switzerland, and (most recently) the Netherlands. A German-language edition of her study was published by Klett Cotta earlier this year.
Upcoming events are normally advertised on the dedicated research page: Holocaust Memory and Muslims in Germany.