After over fifteen months, the war in Palestine has finally reached at least an initial pause — hopefully followed by a permanent cease-fire in coming months. The destruction in Gaza is unprecedented in scale: according to a recent Guardian report, nearly 50,000 Gazans — roughly 2 percent of the population — have been killed, over 100,00 more are wounded, many with debilitating injuries. Some 90 percent of the population has been displaced, and most have nowhere to return to, as nearly two-thirds of buildings in the Gaza Strip are damaged or destroyed.

Throughout the war, two countries in particular stood out for their unflinching support for Israel: its oldest backer, the United States, but also Germany. The leadership in Berlin has often cited a distinctive Staatsräson (“reason of state”), based on Germans’ historical responsibility for the Holocaust, to refuse to condemn or at least cease military support for Israel. Yet this, added to the fact that many credible international observers have accused Israel of genocide, has prompted millions in the country and around the world to ask whether Germany’s reckoning with its own dark past was as thorough, and as meaningful, as previously believed.

Enzo Traverso, a historian of contemporary Europe, is renowned for his research on critical themes such as war, fascism, genocide, revolution, and collective memory. His latest work, Gaza Faces History, examines the Gaza war as a combination of colonial legacies and humanitarian crises. In the book, he also critiques the instrumentalization of Holocaust memory — particularly by Germany — and discusses its shift from a universal lesson against oppression to a narrative used to justify a current genocide. He spoke with Jacobin about the German state’s behavior since the war in Gaza began and what lessons he draws for developing a truly universalist and internationalist memory politics.