Following heavy-handed policing on 18 January against the regular anti-genocide protests in London, the Canary spoke with one descendant of a Holocaust survivor who attended the march and witnessed what went on.
Carolyn Gelenter was one of hundreds of Jewish people who opposed the police ban on protesting outside the BBC on 18 January. And she described to us in detail the aggressive policing she experienced outside the BBC, and the chaotic, ‘bizarre’ policing around Trafalgar Square.
Aggressive policing outside the BBC
“It’s like in Palestine”
On 18 January, Gelenter had planned to go to directly to Whitehall on 18 January to stand under the banner of the descendants of Holocaust survivors. But first, she met a friend outside the BBC. They thought there might be some protesters there, but people had generally followed police orders to stay away. So they kept walking.
Suddenly, however, Met Police officers appeared, saying they couldn’t protest there. Gelenter answered “I’m not protesting. I just happen to be standing here.” Her friend, on the other hand, said “I am exercising my democratic right to protest”. At that moment, she explained:
I didn’t kind of feel like it’s worth getting arrested when nobody was around. It was just her and I. So she sat down. They started to heat up, and the big heavies came over in the black uniforms. So then there are about 12-15 police around.
They were surrounded, and she eventually told them she would cross the road, saying:
I’m going to observe, because you’re arresting my friend, and I don’t want to leave her, and I want to make sure that everything’s okay.
She still had a sign on saying she’s the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and even promised to take her placard off while she observed. A police officer, however, barked:
No, we gave you the chance to take your placard off. You chose not to do it, so now I’m going to arrest you.
She responded by asking them not to patronise her and to speak to her with the same politeness she had spoken to them with. They said she needed to move out of this ‘zone’. As she told us:
It’s like in Palestine, where the military come in and declare a closed military zone and start arresting people.
The BBC is a ‘state institution’. What do you expect?
As she moved away from the scene, about six officers followed her down the road. She kept asking where the ‘zone’ ended and they told her she had to go to Russell Square, where no protesters were. She also explained:
I’d stop every now and then because I was trying to ring my friend’s partner. And they came right up into my back and kept saying ‘Keep moving!’
She added:
The sergeant, who was all dressed in black, really came over in my face, and he was really heavy.
She felt angry about the powerlessness in this situation, but she simply told herself to step away. “This is the state,” she said, adding:
If anybody thinks that the BBC is there to tell different versions of the truth, they need to think again. They’re a state institution. So I said that to myself, what do you expect of the BBC?
The Jewish Bloc and Trafalgar Square
“The most bizarre policing”
The police left Gelenter when she was a few streets away from the BBC. And she eventually joined the Jewish Bloc on the anti-genocide march.
She explained that:
When I was marching with the Jewish Bloc, the police bottlenecked the demonstration on the side of Trafalgar Square. They stopped people going through. That’s when Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell and all of that stuff happened. They’d gone through. And we were following.
But suddenly, she remembered, “there was this line of police in front of us”:
At that point, there are about 40 of us from different various Jewish groups, and the police kept saying, ‘if you don’t stop, we’re going to arrest you’.
This was “the most bizarre policing”, she said, because “they were letting people in” but not the Jewish Bloc. She suggested it might have been to “cause chaos”. And her feeling at that moment was:
I would get arrested for that en masse. I felt that would make sense.
However:
Eventually, lots of other people came behind the police and said ‘let them through’, and the police just sort of melted.
“It’s quite clear they’ve changed their tactic”
After she and others finally made it to Trafalgar Square, the police “bottlenecked” them. A number of officers read her the Riot Act and with one, she said:
I just burst out laughing. I said ‘I could repeat back to you what you’re about to say to me’. And I said, ‘do you mind just leaving me alone? I’m really tired. I’m nearly 70 and, as you can see, I’m the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and I’d quite like just to stand here and rest for a bit.’ And he just laughed and walked off.
She has been on many of these anti-genocide demonstrations, and she explained that they’re generally like a “kind of carnival”, with a peaceful atmosphere and people “playing music”. But with the last march, she spoke of a change from the police, saying:
It’s quite clear they’ve changed their tactic. I am wondering whether they’re going to allow any more demos. And then the question will be, ‘will we march?’ Because it’s scary if you’re not used to it.
When we let fear take control, awful things can happen
Gelenter added that many police officers told her they were ‘just following orders’. And she said:
We all commit acts of evil by obeying orders.
She added that:
It’s much easier to understand why people supported the Nazis than it is to understand those people in their acts of courage who stood out.
It’s very hard to step out of our comfort zone, she insisted:
We’re all sheep, you know, we all want to belong.
And speaking about people who haven’t come out onto the streets to protest against Britain’s participation in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, she said:
If we think for any moment that we would have acted any differently [under the Nazis], we are totally lacking honesty, because it’s like this. It’s like, why didn’t people come to the BBC? It’s the same stuff. We’re all frightened.
