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02.04.2018

ECHO nomination for Kollegah / Farid Bang: Auschwitz survivors are outraged

 
 
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Auschwitz survivors in the International Auschwitz Committee are outraged by the nomination of the rap duo Kollegah/Farid Bang for the Germany’s ECHO Music Prize, despite their texts that are regularly filled with hatred and fantasies of violence.

Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the committee commented in Berlin:

"The Auschwitz survivors are particularly angered by the rap duo’s piece 0815. In it Kollegah and Farid Bang disparage the suffering of the people in Auschwitz in a heartless, vile and callously calculated way and promote anti-Semitic sentiments. The survivors are particularly disgusted by the section of text ‘My body is defined like by Auschwitz prisoners’, which is not only crude and insulting but also contemptuous of them and their murdered relatives: Auschwitz is being used as a means of cheap provocation, and it is being abused for sensationalism, as a sales gimmick and an ego kick.

Compassion and empathy are obviously two sentiments that are alien to the world of battle rap. And they don’t boost the sales figures. It’s clear that the singers know little or nothing about Auschwitz. The Auschwitz survivor Esther Bejarano, who was imprisoned in Auschwitz as a young girl and played in the girls’ orchestra in Birkenau, and today also gives concerts together with the rap group Microphone Mafia, is very willing to tell the singers and the visitors of the ECHO award ceremony about her memories of Auschwitz and to explain why such texts insult every single person who is weighed down by real suffering, be it from Auschwitz or as a result of a terror attack on a Christmas market. And to show why such texts ridicule a world in which empathy is still a very real sentiment that people are still able to feel for others."