Writer receives German prize after backlash for comparing Gaza to Nazi ghettos
Masha Gessen, a Russian-American writer and activist, has been awarded a German literary prize in a scaled-back ceremony after a backlash over an article that compared Gaza to a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.
Gessen had been due to receive the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought at city hall in Bremen, northwest Germany, on Friday, but the ceremony was called off after the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which sponsors the prize, and the city’s Senate withdrew support.
Gessen, who writes for the New Yorker, was instead given the award on Saturday at a small venue with about 50 guests present and police officers guarding the door, the German news agency dpa reported.
In a New Yorker article “In the Shadow of the Holocaust” published earlier this month, Gessen argued that Germany suppresses legitimate criticism of Israel and described Gaza as a ghetto that is being “liquidated.”
The Heinrich Böll Foundation branded the comparison “unacceptable”, saying it did not contribute to understanding the war.