The Free University of Berlin (FU) has decided that a British-led travelling exhibition about anti-Jewish pogroms cannot be held at the university, amid fears of an “emotional reaction” from students.
The exhibition, entitled The Vicious Circle, has been curated by the UK National Holocaust Centre and Museum in Newark, Nottinghamshire. It opens in London on International Holocaust Memorial Day, 27th January, before going on tour.
The FU’s Friedrich Meinecke Institute for History had agreed to host it, but was overruled by the university’s vice president for international affairs, Professor Verena Blechinger-Talcott.
An FU spokesperson cited concerns about the “intense debates” the exhibition might provoke, adding that unsupervised exhibitions “of all kinds and on various topics can evoke emotional reactions” which pose challenges to public order.
In October, a masked group of what were described as “anti-Israel activists” broke into an FU building, threatening staff with axes, saws, crowbars and clubs. In February, a Jewish student was hospitalised after being beaten by a fellow student following an argument about the Hamas-Israel conflict.
The fact that the universities of Leipzig and Freiburg have recently cancelled lectures on anti-Semitism has also sparked accusations that German universities are bowing to pressure from pro-Palestinian protesters.
The new exhibition tackles the history of violent attacks on Jewish communities from the Nazi era to the present, displaying five pogroms on display walls arranged in a circle: Berlin in 1938, Baghdad in 1941, Kielce in Poland in 1946, Aden in Yemen in 1947 and Kibbutz Be’eri on 7th October 2023. The images are accompanied by anti-Semitic quotations from people including Hitler, the pre-war Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammed Amin al-Husseini and today’s Hamas ideologues.
In exploring the “psychology of pogromists”, the exhibition also discusses the “alliance between left-wing extremists and Islamists” that continues to spread anti-Jewish narratives.
Maiken Umbach, the chief academic advisor to the UK Holocaust Museum, says The Vicious Circle was expressly designed not to be exhibited in museums: “If we talk about Jewish history and anti-Jewish violence only in Jewish museums and in Holocaust museums, we’re preaching to the choir and they’re not reaching the people we need to reach right now.
“We’re seeing a stark increase in anti-Semitic sentiments and violence around the world, not only since October 7, but systematically over the last ten years. So we’re trying to reach a broader audience.
“It’s not about comparing the Holocaust directly to anything in the present. It’s saying there’s a 2,000 year history of anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa and it didn’t end in 1945.
“None of them are exactly the same, but it is remarkable when we look at the voices of the perpetrators who are cited in the exhibition how often there’s a recycling of the same anti-Jewish libels.”
