Rosenbrück Discusses Germany's Complacency in the Gaza War

On Feb. 17, Assistant Professor of German Jonas Rosenbrück spoke to a full CHI Think Tank in a talk titled “Facing Gaza — Germany’s Holocaust Memory Culture in Crisis,” as part of the ongoing lecture series “Nationalism and Its Exclusions.” Drawing on his three most recent publications, Rosenbrück aimed to explain Germany’s pro-Israel stance in relation to the war in Gaza, particularly in light of its antisemitic actions during the Holocaust. 

Rosenbrück highlighted that Germany’s stance after the Holocaust has generally been summed up as a pledge of “never again,” effectively declaring that Germany would stand on the side of law and intervene against any future human rights violations. However, Rosenbrück argued that a more accurate summary of Germany’s position in recent years has become “never again, once again.” Germany’s monetary support for the Israeli military and its assistance in Israel’s legal proceedings, he said, are instances of Germany failing to live up to its own promise.

Rosenbrück’s talk was split into four parts, aiming to answer an overarching question: “How did a country that explicitly dedicates itself to genocide prevention not only fail to prevent the genocide of Palestinians, but ended up actively facilitating and contributing to it?” 

In part one of the talk, “History and Function of Germany-Israel Relations,” Rosenbrück noted that the contemporary understanding of German history follows a redemptive trajectory, in which Germany worked to protect Jewish rights and guarantee Israel’s statehood as a way to atone for Holocaust atrocities. Rosenbrück also explained that Germany transferred their moral guilt partly into  military debt, which in turn justified their militarization of Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. 

Part two of the talk, “Unsettled Debts — The Palestinian Disruption,” discussed how Palestinians have fallen victim to Germany’s lingering guilt. Rosenbrück outlined Germany’s support for Israel’s founding and subsequent “ethnic cleansings” of Palestinians over the years. “Palestinians do not fit into Germany’s trajectory toward righteous goodness, because they cast doubt on the state of Israel’s goodness, and, by extension, on the function that the state [of Israel] is supposed to fulfill for Germans,” he said. “To the German, the Palestinian thus unwittingly reopens the wounds of the past.” 

In part three of the talk, “Imperceptions of Palestine,” Rosenbrück turned to analyze the perception of the war in Gaza in mainstream German society. He noted that mainstream German literature on the events of Oct. 7 is written almost entirely by Jewish authors. Rosenbrück’s explanation emphasized the imperceptibility of Palestinian voices amid the unfolding conflict: “The Palestinian is the one whose speech can only be heard as noise, never as logos, that is, as reasoned speech.”

Rosenbrück noted that Palestinians are often viewed as either victims or terrorists by the West, and rarely as autonomous political agents. In contrast, Rosenbrück claimed that “Jewish Germans seem similarly invested in such a perceptual schema to see Jews as always victimized and virtuous,” and that for non-Jewish Germans, “this can be understood as a troubling philosemitism that is not always antithetical to antisemitism, and can easily tip over into a form of antisemitic fetishism.” Rosenbrück further suggested that Germany’s far right could use Israel’s supposed moral justification as grounds for violence against Muslims and other minorities. 

The final part of the talk, “Toward a Better Memory Culture,” focused on possible changes Germany could make while still reconciling its antisemitic past. Rosenbrück focused on the presence of a moral alliance between Germany and Israel, and called on Germans to critically engage this position and interrogate their idealization of Israel. Referring to an at-times “narcissistic” memory culture, he stated that Germany needs to acknowledge Palestine and a non-idealized Israel. A memory culture directed toward justice rather than guilt, he said, was needed to facilitate this shift. 

Additionally, by focusing on rectifying the impacts of the Holocaust, Rosenbrück noted how Germany is forgetting other oppressions it has waged. Its colonial crimes against the Herero people in Libya, for instance, are seldom taught in schools but deserve recognition as well. “One of the ways to break out of Germany’s narcissistic memory culture is to really try to pluralize, for instance, the histories of violence that we tell about the German nation state right, to not allow for this kind of narrowing of the one thing that you think you’ve dealt with properly,” Rosenbrück said. 

The reception of the talk was largely positive. Amelia Cogan ’26 thought Rosenbrück’s analysis felt true to her experience visiting Poland, a country scarred by Nazi occupation and the systemic murder of over 90% of its Jewish community. “I appreciated that he folded in some theory, but it also felt very earnest and human,” she said. “We’ve repented and lost so much, and we are now supporting the state of Israel ... it felt very familiar to the conversations that I encountered [in Poland].”