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.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
