golden palasyo Challenging How Germany Remembers the 1972 Olympics Attack

2025-02-19 20:06

You don’t expect to see security guards roaming the foyer of the Hannover State Operagolden palasyo, a well-regarded, midsize opera house in a midsize central German city.

But before the Saturday premiere of “Echo 72: Israel in Munich,” a new opera about the attack on Israeli athletes by Palestinian militants at the 1972 Munich Olympics, at least four guards tried to blend into the crowd, surveying audience members as they arrived.

But the move backfired in a way that few supporters expected. Californians in 2021 actually tossed nearly 50 percent more plastic bags, by weight, than when the law first passed in 2014, according to data from CalRecycle, California’s recycling agency.

His debunked claims about Haitian migrants stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets in Springfield, Ohio, helped stir a firestorm over immigration in that community, which has dealt with bomb threats and evacuations after Mr. Trump made his comments.

“The biggest challenge is fear,90jili casino and the fear is everywhere,” said Laura Berman, the Hannover State Opera’s artistic director. “The fear is in all the people who participate in the project.”

While “Echo 72” was first envisioned in 2021, its premiere came at a time when tensions over the war in Gaza are running high in Germany’s culture scene. After Hamas’s brutal assault on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s deadly retaliation in Gaza, many artists here who had criticized Israel had shows canceled, prizes suspended and talks called off.

The challenge of making art in such a polarized society “is enormous,” Berman said. Recently, the debate has become so shrill that exhibitions and performances only loosely related to the Middle East have been hit with protests.

In this charged atmosphere, the new opera and the movie “September 5” — which dramatizes the same events and came out in German movie theaters this month — are challenging how Germany remembers its history, at a time when the overlap between that story and Israel’s is especially fraught.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.golden palasyo