Crime en mer Égée

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Le 24 décembre 2021, un bateau a fait naufrage au large de l’île de Paros, en Grèce. Sur les 79 réfugiés qui avaient embarqué pour rejoindre l’Italie, 16 ont perdu la vie le jour du réveillon. La journaliste allemande Alexandra Senfft, habitante de l’île, était là. Elle raconte.
Mediaparte, 3 January 2022
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An Imaginary Racism: Islamophobia and Guilt

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Deeply ignorant – Pascal Bruckner’s hateful verbal crusade
In his controversial book published in 2020, French author Pascal Bruckner describes anti-Muslim sentiment as a fiction, claiming that the term “Islamophobia” is being used to silence criticism of the religion. Alexandra Senfft responds by highlighting the contradictions in a popular view of Islam and Muslims that leaves little room for nuance
Qantara.de, 17 February 2021
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The German model for America

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The long and public reckoning that followed the Holocaust shows a path forward for a United States that desperately needs to confront its racist past.

“In her [Senfft’s] estimation, even now, the Nazis have been “othered,” as if the evil hadn’t taken root in Germans’ own families and neighborhoods. Those who did confront the crimes of their ancestors could not have been prepared for what that realization would feel like…
In American textbooks and schools and families, the same phenomenon that Senfft described of Nazism is true.”
By Mattie Khan, Vox.com
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Government on recall

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Israel: Hundreds of thousands protest against “Crime Minister” Benjamin Netanyahu, by Alexandra Senfft

Kochav Shachar says she is currently a full-time activist. Since June, the 22-year-old Arabic student from Tel Aviv has been taking part in demonstrations against her government, often up to four times a week. On Saturday October 10th, nearly 200,000 people vented their anger. They protested against their “Crime Minister”, against Prime Minister Netanyahu, accused of corruption, indignant at his mismanagement of the Covid 19 crisis. A common slogan is “Lech”, Hebrew for “go”.

“Kochi”, Shachar’s nickname, belongs to the minority of those activists for whom Netanyahu’s demission alone would not mean much progress. They are more concerned with the political and economic forces that keep him in power. Kochi and her fellow campaigners therefore want to link different political issues and encourage discourse about the state of Israel’s democracy. They stand up for human rights and are against the occupation of the Palestinian territories, against racism and structural violence: “We must change the system and practice more solidarity,” Kochi is convinced. “There is lots of hatred here, not only between Israelis and Palestinians, but also between right and left, secular and religious people.” She is committed to campaigning for marginalized groups, especially the Palestinian citizens of Israel, but also the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She also supports the “Culture of Solidarity” movement that works to care for those who are poor, lonely and ill in the pandemic period.

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The Long Shadow of the Perpetrators

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This article addresses the transgenerational consequences of the Second World War and the Holocaust for the descendants of the Nazi perpetrators and bystanders. Using the example of her own family, the author traces the external obstacles and the psychological difficulties arising from working through a legacy of crime, compounded by the fact that an atmosphere of taboos, silence and denial has persisted within German families – in spite of all the research and enlightenment in the academic and political spheres. The author argues that the patterns of feeling, thinking and action are often passed down when they are not scrutinised. Meaningful dialogues with the survivors and their descendants, as well as authentic remembrance, the author claims, can only take place if descendants of the victimisers break away from those generationally transmitted narratives which continue to evade the entire truth about the crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices in Europe.
European Judaism, Volume 53, September 2020
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