For Immediate Release
Contact: The Jewish Theater of New York • TheJTNY@aol.com
The Jewish Theater of New York Condemns Use of a Concentration Camp Memorial as a Platform to Attack Jewish Theater's Artistic Director and Expresses its Surprise at Mounting Silence of Media and Public Figures in Germany
Last month The Jewish Theater of New York called for the dismissal of Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial director, Mr. Volkhard Knigge, following Tenenbom's revelations in I Sleep in Hitler's Room (Allein unter Deutschen) of Knigge's infatuation with the "Uganda" club, and Knigge's attacks on Tenenbom. As Tenenbom also noted, Knigge is entitled to his views about where Jews should settle (apparently in Africa) but we believe that a man with such views should not be the head of a Concentration Camp Memorial. Keeping the memory of the dead by a man with such views is utterly inappropriate.
To date, not a single German public figure or journalist took up the case. On the contrary: some German journalists went on to give Knigge platform to spread lies, keep hate going, and then misquote Tenenbom in order to 'prove' Tenenbom a liar -- all the while when none of those journalists ever bothered to read the book, nor had it occurred to them to interview Tenenbom. Instead, they joined Knigge on the attack. One of them, a so-called "specialist on Jewish affairs," went the extra mile: You wouldn't want this literary trash for Christmas, would you? he said on the radio. As if this wasn't enough, he went on: If you already have the book, please take it back to the bookstore; the bookstore will exchange it for you... This book-criticism-for-the-retarded was aired on Deutschlandfunk, supposedly a 'superior' news organization. Yet, even Deutschlandfunk realized how embarrassing this was and cut these last statements from their internet version -- but Knigge's attacks, how not, remain for posterity.
Knigge got the message, if anybody ever doubted.
Emboldened by having the media on his side, Knigge is now using Buchenwald's website as if it were his own private site, smear-campaigning Tenenbom on Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial's website. In addition, he uses Buchenwald's site to post a link to Deutschlandfunk's "literary trash" airing. He obviously thinks this is a good use of dead Jews' memory: attack the living Jews.
It is enough that ONLY ONE journalist in Germany dared to question Süddeutsche Zeitung's use of the term "The Jew Tenenbom," referring to our Artistic Director and their adding insult to injury by claiming that the phrase "hysterical Jew like the patron saint of all of them, Woody Allen" is actually a complement. Inappropriately, the rest of the media filled their mouths with water and let their pens dry.
This behavior, sadly, seems to be common. After Tenenbom made public the shameful fact that the media conglomerate WDR in Köln is for years assisting an anti-Semitic group in the city, the whole of German media keeps silent. This act, or lack of acts, has emboldened WDR to keep on doing just the same. And when Tenenbom's book -- originally published in the USA by The Jewish Theater of New York -- was published in Germany by Suhrkampverlag, WDR went straight on the attack. As is regretfully often the case in Germany, they found a Jew to do their dirty job. And indeed Günter Ginzel, a Jew convicted of fraud by a German court, was glad to take on the task and called Tenenbom "dumb" on a WDR station. This nightmarish fact, we guess, is called 'book criticism.'
It's high time that the media in Germany change their tactics.
The task of journalists in a free and democratic society is not to cover up ugly deeds, but to expose them. We call upon our brothers and sisters in the German media and public to stop this course. We firmly believe that the path to cure the ills of the past demands hard work for a hopefully better and brighter future. The time for such a work has arrived.
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