As a child, I saw what follows ethnic cleansing. That’s why I am speaking out about my new home’s silence over Palestinian deaths, says author Lana Bastašić
When I moved to Berlin, I developed a habit of stopping by the Stolpersteine (“stumbling stones” memorials) and reading about Jewish people who were taken from their homes and transported to the concentration camps.
My family comes from Croatia, and as non-Croats we left the country during the nationalist frenzy of the early 1990s, which the late Dubravka Ugrešić described in her work as the fight for “pure Croatian air”.
Having been persecuted in Croatia since the early 1940s – my grandpa managed to leave the Jasenovac concentration camp alive at the age of 11 – we found ourselves in the north of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
People who lived by our side, sent their children to the same schools, spoke the same language, were now portrayed as non-human, as jihadists who would kill us while we slept, as animals that would pull our teeth out and rape our women.
Yet while artists and writers are cancelled for their alleged antisemitism, real neo-Nazism is on the rise, with the far-right party AfD, Alternative for Germany, winning local elections and mainstream politicians float the idea of doing deals with them.
The same book fair that shut down Shibli’s award ceremony faced criticism previously for including a hard-right publishing house, Antaios, in its programme, with AfD members in attendance.
The original article contains 1,420 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When I moved to Berlin, I developed a habit of stopping by the Stolpersteine (“stumbling stones” memorials) and reading about Jewish people who were taken from their homes and transported to the concentration camps.
My family comes from Croatia, and as non-Croats we left the country during the nationalist frenzy of the early 1990s, which the late Dubravka Ugrešić described in her work as the fight for “pure Croatian air”.
Having been persecuted in Croatia since the early 1940s – my grandpa managed to leave the Jasenovac concentration camp alive at the age of 11 – we found ourselves in the north of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
People who lived by our side, sent their children to the same schools, spoke the same language, were now portrayed as non-human, as jihadists who would kill us while we slept, as animals that would pull our teeth out and rape our women.
Yet while artists and writers are cancelled for their alleged antisemitism, real neo-Nazism is on the rise, with the far-right party AfD, Alternative for Germany, winning local elections and mainstream politicians float the idea of doing deals with them.
The same book fair that shut down Shibli’s award ceremony faced criticism previously for including a hard-right publishing house, Antaios, in its programme, with AfD members in attendance.
The original article contains 1,420 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!