Masha Gessen’s prize for freethinking withdrawn for freethinking about Gaza

JVL Introduction

Irony is not yet dead.

Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen won the Hannah Arendt Prize, named after the C20 German American Jewish philosopher who devoted her life to understanding totalitarianism, revolution, the nature of freedom and political life.

Then, in a substantial essay In the shadow of the Holocaust published in the New Yorker on 9th December, Gessen applied critical insight into trying to make sense of how the politics of memory in Europe today impedes understanding of Israel and the Gaza crisis.

A comparison made between the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and that of Jews in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe proved too much for the progressive Heinrich Böll Foundation, associated with the German Greens, and for the city of Bremen, both of which pulled out of hosting the award.

Below Gessen is interviewed about this by the Washington Post, on the way to collect the award at a hastily arranged smaller ceremony elsewhere in Bremen.

RK

PS: Since we posted this, Gessen has been interview on DemocracyNow. You can watch that interview and read the transcript here.

This article was originally published by Washington Post on Thu 14 Dec 2023. Read the original here.