Masha Gessen: The Intellectual Framework Behind the Comparison

To comprehend the genesis of Gessen’s controversial statement, one must first understand the author themself. Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist and author, born to a Jewish family in the Soviet Union, whose entire career has been dedicated to dissecting the mechanics of authoritarianism and the erosion of democratic norms. Their acclaimed biographies of figures like Vladimir Putin and their analytical work on the rise of Donald Trump establish a clear through-line: a focus on how power consolidates, how dissent is silenced, and how historical narratives are weaponized.

Central to Gessen’s perspective is a concept they have often explored: the idea of “the slippery slope” or the step-by-step normalization of the unthinkable. In their writing, they argue that societies do not plunge suddenly into totalitarianism but descend gradually through a series of accepted compromises, legalistic veneers, and dehumanizing rhetoric. This lens is crucial for interpreting their view of Gaza. Gessen does not posit a direct, one-to-one equivalence between the Nazi Final Solution and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, they engage in what scholars of memory call “productive analogy”—using a historical extreme as a conceptual framework to interrogate present-day structures of control, containment, and collective punishment.

For Gessen, the value of the comparison lies in its power to shock the conscience and disrupt comfortable narratives. They operate from a position that privileges the warning function of history. In their view, the Holocaust’s most sacred lesson is “Never Again for anyone,” a universal imperative to prevent mass atrocity, rather than a unique historical possession to be guarded from metaphorical use. This stance inherently clashes with a more particularist view, held by many Jewish institutions and individuals, that the Holocaust is a singular event whose imagery must never be diluted or appropriated for other political causes, especially those criticizing Israel.

Gessen’s own Jewish identity and family history—which includes relatives who perished in the Holocaust—adds a complex, personal dimension to their arguments. It grants them a form of insider standing to make such a fraught comparison, while also making the accusations of “ Holocaust distortion” from other Jewish groups particularly biting and personal. This background is not a shield from criticism but is fundamental to their intellectual and moral claim: that as a Jew and a student of totalitarianism, they have a responsibility to sound the alarm when they perceive echoes of catastrophic historical patterns, regardless of the perpetrator.

The Warsaw Ghetto: Historical Reality vs. Contemporary Analogy

The potency—and for many, the profound offensiveness—of Gessen’s comparison stems from the specific historical reality they invoked: the Jewish ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe, with the Warsaw Ghetto serving as the most iconic example. Established by Nazi decree in 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto was a walled district where over 400,000 Jews were forcibly concentrated under conditions of deliberate, systematic deprivation. The Nazi objective was not merely to imprison but to decimate the population through starvation, disease, and overcrowding, as a prelude to mass deportations to extermination camps.

The parallels Gessen suggests focus on the structural and functional aspects of enclosure and control, rather than a claim of identical genocidal intent. They point to several key features:

Forced Enclosure and Movement Restrictions: Like the Warsaw Ghetto, Gaza is a densely populated, bounded territory from which its inhabitants cannot freely leave. The Israeli-Egyptian blockade, in place since 2007, controls all movement of people and goods in and out, creating what human rights organizations like Amnesty International have called an “open-air prison.”
Economic Strangulation and Dependency: The Nazi authorities deliberately engineered famine in the ghetto by severing economic ties and providing grossly inadequate food supplies. Critics of the Gaza blockade argue it has crippled the local economy, made the population overwhelmingly dependent on international aid for basic survival, and, according to UN reports, brought the population to the brink of famine during periods of intense conflict.
Overcrowding and Humanitarian Crisis: The catastrophic population density and lack of adequate infrastructure in Warsaw led to outbreaks of typhus and mass starvation. Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on Earth, faces recurring crises in healthcare, water sanitation, and electricity, exacerbated by repeated military conflicts that destroy vital infrastructure.

The critical distinction, and the core of the counter-argument, lies in stated intent and ultimate objective. The Nazi ghetto was an explicit, interim stage in a program of racial extermination—the Holocaust. The official Israeli position is that the blockade of Gaza is a necessary security measure to prevent weapons smuggling and attacks by Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization by Israel and many Western countries. From this perspective, any civilian suffering is a tragic but unintended consequence of warfare against a militant group embedded in the population, not a deliberate policy of elimination.

However, Gessen and other critics challenge this framing of intent. They point to statements by some Israeli officials advocating harsh measures, the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure in military campaigns, and the findings of international legal experts who have raised the alarm about potential genocidal acts. The debate, therefore, hinges on whether the observable conditions in Gaza—the widespread suffering and mortality—result from a legitimate security strategy gone awry or from a policy of collective punishment that, regardless of its stated goals, produces outcomes bearing a disturbing resemblance to historical precedents of atrocity.

The Immediate Firestorm: Cancellation, Criticism, and Support

The practical consequences of Gessen’s analogy were swift and concrete, illustrating the high-stakes politics of historical memory in Germany and beyond. Gessen was set to receive the prestigious Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought in Bremen, Germany, in December 2023. The award committee, which had selected Gessen for their incisive analysis of authoritarianism, suddenly found itself under immense pressure. The Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Green Party-aligned organization co-hosting the event, withdrew its support, citing Gessen’s comments on Gaza as the reason.

Facing this political backlash, the original awarding body, the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Bremen, made the unprecedented decision to cancel the award ceremony entirely. They stated that Gessen’s positions had “crossed a line.” This act of cancellation became a major news story in itself, seen by many as a capitulation to political orthodoxy and a suppression of critical discourse, particularly concerning Israel. In a compromise, a separate, privately organized ceremony was later held where Gessen was finally given the award, using the platform to deliver a powerful speech defending the necessity of their comparison.

The criticism against Gessen was multifaceted and vehement:

Holocaust Trivialization: The most frequent charge, led by organizations like the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), was that Gessen’s comparison “diminishes the Holocaust” and “ relativizes” the unique suffering of Jews. They argued it exploited Jewish trauma to score political points against Israel.
Harming Jewish Safety: Critics contended that such rhetoric, especially from a Jewish voice, fuels antisemitism by painting Israel, the Jewish state, as a Nazi-like entity. This “demonization,” they argue, creates a dangerous climate for Jews worldwide.
Historical Inaccuracy: Detractors insisted the analogy was factually flawed, ignoring the fundamental differences in intent and ideological motive between Nazi Germany and the modern State of Israel.

Conversely, Gessen received robust support from a range of public intellectuals, journalists, and free speech advocates. Their defenders made several key arguments:

Defending Intellectual Courage: Supporters saw Gessen as upholding the true spirit of Hannah Arendt—who famously analyzed the “banality of evil”—by courageously speaking truth to power, even when it was uncomfortable.
Upholding a Universalist Lesson: They agreed with Gessen’s premise that “Never Again” must mean vigilance against all forms of mass atrocity, and that exempting certain actors from scrutiny based on identity politics betrays that lesson.
Condemning Censorship: The cancellation was widely denounced as an act of cowardice and censorship, revealing the stifling constraints on public debate about Israel in Germany, where official policy strongly supports the Israeli government.

Legal and Lexical Battlefields: “Ghetto,” “Genocide,” and International Law

The controversy over Gessen’s words is inextricably linked to a broader, highly charged battle over language in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Terms like “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” and “ghetto” have moved from academic and activist discourse into mainstream political and legal arguments, carrying significant weight and consequence.

The application of the term “genocide” is the most legally grave. The 1948 Genocide Convention defines it as acts committed with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) heard a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention in Gaza. While the court did not rule on the merits of the case, it found the accusation plausible enough to order provisional measures, requiring Israel to prevent acts of genocide and allow humanitarian aid. This legal proceeding lent a new, official dimension to the debates Gessen’s analogy had engaged in the court of public opinion.

The term “ghetto”, while not a formal legal term, carries immense historical and moral baggage. In international human rights law, Israel’s blockade of Gaza is often assessed under frameworks of collective punishment, occupation, and the siege of civilian areas—all potentially violations of International Humanitarian Law. Human rights reports from organizations like Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem have detailed how the blockade restricts nearly all aspects of life, from the ability to travel for work or study to access to adequate healthcare and construction materials. Proponents of using the term “ghetto” argue it captures the experiential reality of life under such comprehensive, long-term enclosure and control, even if the historical context differs.

Israel and its supporters vehemently reject this lexical framework. They argue that terms like “genocide” and “ghetto” are not just inaccurate but malicious, deployed in a campaign of “lawfare” to delegitimize Israel’s right to self-defense and cast it as a uniquely immoral state. They emphasize that Israel withdrew its settlers and military from Gaza in 2005, that the blockade is a response to Hamas’s violent aggression, and that any civilian casualties are the responsibility of Hamas, which operates from within populated areas.

This clash over language is not merely semantic; it is a struggle to define the moral and legal narrative of the conflict. Gessen’s intervention thrust them directly into the center of this struggle, forcing a public reckoning with whether the vocabulary of the 20th century’s worst atrocities has any legitimate application in the 21st century’s protracted conflicts.

The German Context: A Unique Battleground for Memory

The cancellation of the Hannah Arendt Prize ceremony did not occur in a vacuum; it was a distinctly German event. Germany’s relationship with the Holocaust—known as Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or “coming to terms with the past”—is foundational to its modern identity. This has resulted in a staunch official policy of supporting Israel’s security, often summarized as “Staatsräson” (reason of state). Criticism of Israel is often scrutinized through the lens of whether it crosses into antisemitism, as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition, which includes “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

In this environment, Gessen’s comparison was not just controversial; it was, in the view of many German political and cultural institutions, verboten—forbidden. The pressure on the Böll Foundation came from this deep-seated orthodoxy. The incident highlighted a growing tension within Germany (and elsewhere in Europe) between two competing imperatives:

The Duty to Protect Jewish Memory: The commitment to ensure the Holocaust’s uniqueness is respected and that its memory is not instrumentalized against the Jewish state.
The Duty to Uphold Free Speech and Critical Inquiry: The democratic principle that even profoundly disturbing and unpopular comparisons must be engaged with, not silenced, especially in an intellectual award context.

Many observers saw the cancellation as a failure of the latter duty. They argued that Germany’s rigorous culture of memory had, in this instance, curdled into a dogmatic enforcement of a specific political stance on Israel, stifling the kind of nuanced, difficult discussion that figures like Hannah Arendt themselves embodied. The affair raised urgent questions about whether Germany’s “ special responsibility” requires unconditional support for Israeli government policy, or if it demands a more complex vigilance against all forms of dehumanization and oppression, wherever they occur.

Media, Public Intellectuals, and the Shaping of Discourse

The Gessen controversy serves as a potent case study in the role of the public intellectual and the media in shaping discourse on intractable conflicts. Gessen operates in the tradition of writers who use their platform to frame issues in morally and historically provocative terms, aiming to break through public desensitization and editorial caution.

The media’s coverage of the incident revealed its own fault lines. Some major outlets framed the story primarily as one of “ Holocaust controversy” and “award cancellation,” while others focused on the substantive issues in Gaza that prompted the analogy. The framing often reflected the outlet’s own editorial stance on Israel. Furthermore, the episode demonstrated the “chilling effect” such backlash can have. Other writers, journalists, and academics noted privately that the severe consequences faced by a figure of Gessen’s stature would likely make institutions and individuals more cautious about critiquing Israel in similar terms, for fear of being censured or labelled antisemitic.

This dynamic touches on a central paradox: the desire for “safe” language when discussing profound human suffering can itself become a mechanism for avoiding uncomfortable truths. Gessen’s strategy was the opposite—to use “unsafe” language to create a cognitive and moral shock, forcing audiences to look anew at a crisis many felt they had already understood. Whether this tactic is seen as courageous truth-telling or irresponsible polemic depends largely on the viewer’s pre-existing political and moral framework.

Broader Implications for Historical Memory and Human Rights

Beyond the immediate politics of Israel and Palestine, the Gessen debate forces a global conversation about how societies use and regulate historical memory. The Holocaust holds a uniquely central place in Western moral consciousness. The conflict arises when that memory is invoked not just for commemoration, but as an analytical tool for the present.

One school of thought advocates for a particularist approach: the Holocaust is a singular, incomparable event whose memory must be protected from analogy to preserve its sacredness and to prevent the dilution of its specific lessons about antisemitism. The other advocates for a universalist approach: the Holocaust’s most important lesson is the danger of indifference to state-sanctioned dehumanization, and its memory must be actively applied to prevent atrocities against any group. Gessen firmly occupies the universalist camp, a position that inevitably creates friction with particularist institutions, especially when the subject is Israel.

This tension has practical implications for human rights advocacy. If the most powerful historical reference for atrocity prevention is deemed off-limits in certain contemporary contexts, what language and frameworks remain to mobilize public opinion and political action in the face of severe crisis? Critics of the particularist stance argue it can inadvertently grant moral impunity to actors who are rhetorically shielded by the very history they claim to defend. The Gessen controversy shows that the struggle over memory is not just about the past; it is a struggle over which tools are permissible for diagnosing—and potentially stopping—human rights catastrophes in the present.

Conclusion

The firestorm ignited by Masha Gessen’s comparison of Gaza to a Nazi-era ghetto reveals far more than the sensitivity of one historical analogy. It illuminates the deep fault lines running through contemporary discussions on human rights, historical memory, and political conflict. At its heart, the controversy is a clash between the imperative to protect the unique memory of the Holocaust from trivialization and the imperative to apply its most urgent lessons universally to prevent mass suffering.

Gessen’s intervention, though vilified by many, succeeded in its fundamental intellectual aim: it forced a jarring and uncomfortable re-examination of the conditions in Gaza through the stark lens of 20th-century history. It challenged observers to move beyond the routine headlines of a “complex conflict” and confront the concrete realities of life under prolonged blockade and bombardment. The severe backlash, culminating in the cancellation of a major award in Germany, simultaneously exposed the powerful taboos and political pressures that constrain public discourse, particularly in Europe, regarding Israel.

Ultimately, this episode underscores that language in times of crisis is never neutral. The battle over words like “ghetto,” “siege,” and “genocide” is a proxy for a larger battle over narrative, accountability, and moral responsibility. Whether one views Gessen’s analogy as a necessary provocation or a harmful distortion, it has undeniably sharpened a critical debate. It asks society to grapple with difficult questions: How do we honor the past without being imprisoned by it? When does the protection of a sacred memory begin to silence necessary warnings? And in a world where atrocities continue to unfold, what language is both accurate and powerful enough to spur a conscience-numbed world to action? The search for answers to these questions, as the Gessen controversy proves, remains as urgent as it is divisive.