Jewish American photographer Nan Goldin is one of the most famous contemporary photographers in the world. The 71-year-old today battled drug addiction and a difficult childhood, when she experienced years of abandonment, neglect and her sister’s suicide.

These days she was in Berlin to inaugurate her retrospective “This Will Not End Well” at the Neue Nationalgalerie. An exhibition, which was planned for three years. It is a traveling exhibition and Berlin is already its third stop, after Stockholm and Amsterdam.

Categories to Israel and Germany

However, her speech at the opening was not about art but about the situation in the Middle East today. Nan Goldin didn’t mince her words and made it clear: “I decided to use this report as a platform to express my moral outrage at the genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.”

He spoke of the loss of tens of thousands of people who died violently in the last 13 months. However, he did not hesitate to blame Germany for the solidarity it shows to Israel. According to the artist, Germany hosts the largest Palestinian diaspora in Europe, yet the protests of these people are met with police dogs.

“Are you afraid to hear this, Germany?” he stated.

Goldin is Jewish herself. Her grandparents fled the anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia in the late 19th century. “I grew up knowing about the Nazi Holocaust. What I see in Gaza reminds me of the pogroms my grandparents escaped,” he said, adding: “The entire infrastructure in Palestine has been destroyed. Hospitals, schools, universities, libraries. It is also a cultural genocide. Why can’t you see this in Germany?’

Goldin’s speech is divisive

Goldin’s speech brought relief to many like-minded visitors. “I felt like it was the first time in a long time that we could breathe in Germany,” one user wrote on Instagram.

There has long been a debate in Germany about when someone is considered anti-Semitic. Recently, the German Parliament passed a resolution on anti-Semitism entitled “Never Again is Now: Protecting, Preserving and Strengthening Jewish Life in Germany.” “This resolution is nothing more than a repetition of the resolutions already adopted in 2017 by adopting the definition of the international organization IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance),” says Meron Mendel, Director of the Anne Frank Education Center in Frankfurt.

Critics of the resolution emphasize that it creates a climate of self-censorship and mistrust. Among other things, they argue that the resolution uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of what anti-Semitism means, which can be interpreted too broadly.

For example, he defines “comparing current Israeli policy to Nazi policy” as anti-Semitic. Consequently, Nan Goldin’s attitude that Gaza reminds her of the pogroms her grandparents fled can also be taken as anti-Semitic.

Discussions regarding the situation in the Middle East are becoming increasingly intense, which was also evident at the opening of the exhibition at the Neue National Galerie. The intense protests, the slogans, the walkouts from the exhibition show how much still needs to be said and resolved.

Edited by: Maria Rigoutsou