According to the first court decision on Monday, Roger Waters can speak in Frankfurt on May 28, DPA and Agerpres reported. The co-founder of Pink Floyd, accused of anti-Semitic remarks, challenged in court the local authorities’ decision to suspend his concert at the Festhalle, the place where Nazis abused thousands of Jews.

The concert was originally supposed to be canceled because the singer was accused of making anti-Semitic statements. However, Waters appealed the decision and the Frankfurt Administrative Court ruled in his favor.

The city hall of Frankfurt and the state of Hesse tried to prevent the artist from performing, in particular because of the venue of the performance at the Festhalle. In 1938, the Nazis rounded up, detained and abused 3,000 Jewish men before deporting them.

In its decision, the administrative court referred to the freedom of art and decided that the event did not violate the dignity of the Jews who suffered in this place.

However, the court found that Waters clearly used symbols inspired by the National Socialist regime in the context of his speeches.

Given what happened at the Festhalle, the show could be considered in very bad taste, the court said.

“However, it is not within the court’s jurisdiction to assess this,” the spokeswoman said.

“Anti-Semite to the core”

This is not the first time that Roger Waters has caused controversy. Invited by Russia to appear before the UN Security Council, he condemned the Russian invasion and those who provoked it on Wednesday, angering Ukraine, AFP reported.

Roger Waters was criticized by supporters of Ukraine when, in September 2022, he published on his website an open letter to the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska.

In this letter, the English musician opposed the supply of Western weapons to the Kyiv authorities.

Polly Samson, the wife of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and the lyricist on the band’s last two albums, has attacked former band leader Roger Waters on Twitter, calling him an “anti-Semite” and “Putin apologist,” The Guardian reports. .

“Unfortunately (Waters), you are anti-Semitic to the core. In addition, Putin’s apologist is a liar, a thief, a hypocrite, a tax evader, a misogynist, sick of envy, megalomania. Enough of your bullshit,” she wrote.

Waters denies the allegations

In response to Samson’s tweet, Waters released a statement: “Roger Waters is aware of Polly Samson’s inflammatory and wildly inaccurate comments about him on Twitter, which he completely rejects. He is currently receiving counseling regarding his position.”

Samson’s message apparently refers to an interview Waters gave to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper earlier this month, republished in translation on Waters’ website, in which he questioned whether “Putin (is) a bigger gangster than Joe Biden and all those who have dealt with American politicians since the Second World War,” and also says that Putin “rules cautiously, making decisions based on consensus within the government of the Russian Federation.”

In the interview, Waters also said that “lobbyists in Israel” tried to cancel his concerts in Germany and that “the Israelis are committing genocide”. Just as Britain did during our colonial period… We saw ourselves as inherently superior to the indigenous population, as the Israelis do in Palestine.” He also expresses his continued support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and that he will continue to speak in Moscow “given that Moscow is not running an apartheid state based on the genocide of indigenous peoples.”

Rogers has long been accused of anti-Semitism because of his repeated comparisons between the state of Israel and Nazi Germany. In 2013, for the New York Observer, Rabbi Shmuli Botich wrote to Waters that he had “no decency, no heart, no soul” to compare “Jews to the monsters who killed them.” In response, Waters admitted that “the Holocaust was brutal and heinous beyond our imagination” but that he “grieved” [s] the policies of the Israeli government in the occupied territories and Gaza” and that “he was not anti-Semitic”.

In 2017, German broadcasters canceled the broadcast of Waters’ concerts in Berlin and Cologne due to “accusations of anti-Semitism against him”.

Last year, Waters’ two planned concerts in Poland were canceled because of an open letter he sent to Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, in which he said “nationalist extremists” in Ukraine were to blame for “this catastrophic war.”