Goodbye to Germany

Aperture Priorities Contact Sheet #9

Roma and fascists. 2017 elections, Kreuzberg.

By Joel Schalit

We never intended to live in Germany. But work called, and my partner and I moved from Milano to Berlin in 2010.

Now, back in Italy, this time in Torino, the clarity I'm getting is growing daily.

Especially following the recent disclosure of the Potsdam 2.0 conference held by Alternative für Deutschland in November.

Convened to plan the 'remigration' of millions of minorities to their countries of origin, politically, this is why we left.

No German political party has built a more popular link with the past.

For over a decade, the AfD has done the dirty work necessary to ensure the return of fascist rule.

If you have any doubts, look at the polls. Alternative für Deutschland is the second most popular party in Germany.

As a Jew who lost most of their European family to the Nazis - in Ukraine, Romania, Italy and France - I'm disgusted.

If only my parents’ generation could see me now, having subjected myself to this possibility. It's not like they didn't warn me.

That's part of what motivated me to leave. My ancestors didn't have to perish in the Holocaust to have me willingly live under Nazis.

Germans should be ashamed they've let this happen again. They became neoliberals, and nationalism is its most common response.

Of course, there are other reasons for this crisis, but the inequality neoliberalism created, particularly in the former DDR, should be obvious.

That's also why we loved Berlin so much and found, in its troubled borough of Neukölln, the Germany we loved.

For thirteen and a half years, we heard Hebrew and Arabic spoken on the street daily and ate mountains of Simits and Hummus.

We couldn't have felt more at home. We were poster children for the Jewish return to the city and the country.

But the poverty was heartbreaking, and the filth and drugs just got worse. Ghettos are products of racism, and we finally OD'd on it all.

This week's photos reflect this Neukölln and one in the crosshairs of nationalism.

We start with a defaced AfD billboard from the 2017 election, with a Roma panhandler in front, begging for change.

These photos were taken within walking distance of our home, just off the appropriately named Karl-Marx-Straße.

Having written part of my PhD thesis on the early Marx, it was like living by the most Jewish street of all.

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Old foes, modern enemies. Karl-Marx-Straße, June 2020.

New Eastern Europe. Karl-Marx-Straße, February 2021.

Imagining a better Germany. Karl-Marx-Straße, April 2021.

Hanau massacre protest. Alexanderplatz, February 2020.

They've come for our dairy products. Sonnenallee, October 2018.

Look at all the Hijabis. Karl-Marx-Straße, July 2021.

Comfort food city. Karl-Marx-Platz, February 2020.

Waiting for her train to arrive. Neukölln station, June 2022.

Liberated Berlin. Sonnenallee, August 2018.

Photographs courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.