The city of Berlin senate has banned the use of the red triangle by Pro-Palestinian activists in events related to the Middle East according to recent press reports. This is because the triangle has been appropriated by Hamas supporters.
There is some confusion as to the origins of the use of the red triangle in this context with some saying it represents the red triangle of the Palestinian flag and others that it comes from the videos produced by Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigade where it is often used to identify the enemy. In addition to social media and demonstrations it has been used as graffiti, including on Jewish people’s homes in the United States, as an act of intimidation.
The anti-fascist red triangle
It’s frustrating seeing the red triangle being appropriated by antisemites and their enablers because since the end of the Second World War it has been an anti-fascist symbol. This is the case most notably in Germany, where former political prisoners from the Nazi era, who were forced to wear it on their concentration camp uniforms, turned it into a badge of anti-fascist pride. The triangle is part of the logo of the Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes – Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten (VVN-BdA) – the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists – which was formed in 1947. Originally dominated by communists – for it was they who had been incarcerated – it is the largest and oldest anti-fascist organisation in Germany.
It wasn’t only in Germany that the red triangle was an anti-fascist symbol. It was also our anti-fascist symbol in Britain. In the late 1980s I was a member of the national executive of Anti Fascist Action and our logo was a red triangle piercing a swastika, which harked back to early Soviet propaganda.
In 1918 Nikolai Kolli produced a sculpture of a red triangle piercing and cracking a white block, the block representing the “Whites”, supporters of the Tsar and other reactionaries who opposed the Bolshevik Revolution.
The avant-garde Russian Jewish artist El Lissitzky echoed that sculpture in his famous “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” poster in 1919, some arguing that the slogan was chosen to counter the Russian pogromist slogan “Bej zhidov!” (“Beat the Jews”).
Berlin 1988: the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht
It was in West Berlin in 1988 that I met members of the VVN – as it was then – at an international anti-fascist conference which coincided with the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the mass pogrom initiated by the Nazis. In those days, long before Holocaust Memorial Day was established on January 27, it was commonplace to mark November 9 to remember the victims of Nazism.
The German anti-fascists preferred to call it “Pogromnacht” as Kristallnacht was the Nazis own term for the atrocity and downplays what happened as being a “night of broken glass”. In fact, on November 9 and 10, 1938, Jewish homes and shops were ransacked, and synagogues destroyed. Jews were forced to pay for the damages inflicted upon them. People were tortured in the streets and as many as 30,000 sent to concentration camps.
Graeme Atkinson, who was the European Editor of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight at the time, and busy building what was to become an important international anti-fascist network was involved with organising the conference and convinced the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) to send me as a delegate. I was still a teenager – nineteen years old – and at the end of a term of serving as their national anti-racism officer. As well as the conference there was a demonstration, and I addressed the rally, giving greetings from the UJS.
It's kind of hard to get your head round this but West Berlin was a capitalist island in the DDR, East Germany. West Berlin was formally controlled by the Western Allies and surrounded by the Berlin Wall. The unusual status of the city meant that West Germans could avoid being drafted for compulsory national service by going to live there. As a result there were many young left-wingers living in warehouse squats in the Kreuzberg district and elsewhere that comprised what was known as the Autonoms – independent anti-capitalist leftists who also had little time for what they saw as the repressive East German regime. To us Brits they resembled anarchists, although they weren’t ideologically anarchists in spite of their direct action approach to politics. They often called themselves Antifa and were certainly the forerunners of what is known as Antifa today using the same imagery of black and red flags in the 1980s that Antifa use today.
East Germany: The DDR
As international anti-fascist conference delegates we were welcomed into the DDR as comrades for a tour of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. We were taken in by coach and as official guests of the government the usual visa requirements were wavered. We had a meeting with officials and were then given a tour of the camp.
The handful of English language speakers were given our tour by an English-speaking former inmate, Werner Händler. He explained the central role the camp played in the entire concentration camp system. It was one of the first camps established and had mainly housed political prisoners and was different to the extermination camps that were later established in Poland where millions perished. Nevertheless, at least 30,000 people died at Sachsenhausen. It was the first time I had visited a concentration camp and it was a deeply moving experience.
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That was November 9 1988, 50 years after one of the most significant events on the path to the Holocaust. There was no indication that exactly one year later, November 9 1989, the Berlin Wall would be torn down with Germans celebrating in the streets as the path to reunification began. Amid the celebrations many forgot why Germany was divided in the first place, but not those who had worn the red triangle.