German Rappers Who Mocked Auschwitz Prisoners Agree To Visit Nazi Camp
Farid Bang and Kollegah perform at the Echo Awards on April 12, 2018 in Berlin, Germany. Image by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
(JTA) — The rappers who brought down a prestigious German music prize over songs containing anti-Semitic lyrics will visit Auschwitz.
Kollegah and Farid Bang accepted an invitation from the International Auschwitz Committee to visit the former Nazi death camp next month, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported.
On April 12, they won an Echo Award in the hip-hop category for an album with lyrics that boasted of physiques “more defined that those of Auschwitz inmates” and called for “another Holocaust; let’s grab the Molotov” cocktails. The album’s title in English is “Young, Brutal, Good Looking 3.”
Several prominent German musicians, including conductor Daniel Barenboim, returned their Echo Awards in protest.
Last month, the executive board of Germany’s Music Industry Association, or BVMI, announced that it had decided to discontinue the Echo Awards. “The Echo brand is so badly damaged that a complete new beginning is necessary,” BVMI said in a statement. “Echo will be no more.”
“The events surrounding this year’s Echo, for which the board apologized, cannot be reversed, but we can ensure that such a mistake does not happen again in the future,” the board of the association also said.
Following the controversy, Kollegah and Farid Bang apologized for the lyrics, and their record label put up $125,000 for a campaign to fight anti-Semitism.
Award organizers had cited “freedom of artistic expression” in defending their decision to nominate the two rappers.
Artists are nominated for Echo Awards based on sales numbers and not the quality of their work.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
