If the Germans still derive from the crimes of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers an obligation to the Jews and an increased awareness of even subtle forms of anti-Semitism, then there can only be two reasons: first, that they simply did not notice their provinciality that elsewhere, for example in the so-called Global South, these crimes are placed in completely different contexts and viewed from completely different perspectives;
and that, secondly, because they are know-it-alls and busybodies, they want to impose their view of the crimes, the “German catechism”, as the Australian author Dirk Moses calls it, on everyone else and especially on the inhabitants of this south.
That's how you have to understand the interview that Reza Afisina and Iswanto Hartono have now given to "Zeit".
Afisina and Hartono are members of the Ruangrupa collective, which curated the Documenta last year;
you stayed in Germany after it ended because you have a teaching position at the Hamburg Art Academy.
And now, three months later, they look at the problem like this: "The goal cannot be that we are taught to take anti-Semitism into account as a specifically German problem, but that we learn together to recognize anti-Semitism as a global problem."
This is no doubt true insofar as one could lecture endlessly or publish extensive books on global anti-Semitism.
What is wrong, however, is that from this perspective, sensitivity to anti-Semitism becomes a German whim and combating it becomes a German neurosis.
They were Jews who could hardly believe the pictures they were expected to take in a German exhibition 77 years later.
And their injuries are not worth a word of regret to those of all people who, for their part, have already called the criticism of the Documenta racist.
This is one of the reasons why subtle references to the origin and context of the images sound so convincing, as if someone were defending the use of the N-word by saying that it was only meant in Latin and not in a bad way.
Both curators say they have nothing to do with the BDS boycott movement, and when asked about the “time” why they then signed an appeal accusing Israel of apartheid and calling for a boycott, the answer comes: “We don’t support any form of apartheid and no form of boycott.” The whole documenta, again, in one sentence.
It was not meant in a bad way.