Berlin is currently investigating Roger Waters after he appeared on stage in a costume resembling a Nazi SS officer, as per various reports.
This month, the co-founder of Pink Floyd left his audience shocked during a performance in the German capital.
He started the concert with an assertion that he “condemns antisemitism unreservedly,” after which he continued the show donned in a lengthy black coat, gloves, and a red band on his arm decorated with hammers, a deviation from the Nazi swastika.
During the performance, he displayed the name of Anne Frank, a teenage Holocaust diarist, on a large screen.
The screen displayed several contemporary figures, including George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by Minnesota police in 2020.
It also featured Shireen Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera journalist who lost her life last year while covering an IDF raid on a Palestinian refugee camp.
Jewish News conveyed on Thursday (25 May) that a formal investigation into Waters for possible incitement is underway by Berlin police.
The outlet was informed by Chief Inspector Martin Halweg of the police force: “The State Security Department at the Berlin State Criminal Police Office started to investigate the suspicion of incitement of the people (140 Paragraph four of the German criminal Code).
“The context of the clothing worn is deemed capable of approving, glorifying or justifying the violent and arbitrary rule of the Nazi regime in a manner that violates the dignity of the victims and thereby disrupts public peace.”
“After the conclusion of the investigation, the case will be forwarded to the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office for legal assessment,” the police chief added.
The Independent has contacted a spokesperson for Roger Waters to get a statement.
At the start of the year, certain Jewish organizations appealed for the cancellation of Waters’ concerts in Germany.
The city council of Frankfurt cancelled a scheduled date for the performer, asserting that he is “considered one of the most far-reaching antisemites in the world”.
He had earlier likened the state of Israel to Nazi Germany for its treatment of the Palestinian population.
While conversing with the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, Waters confronted the antisemitism allegations.
He deemed the backlash against him as part of an “outrageous and despicable smear campaign to denounce me as an antisemite, which I am not, never have been and never will be”.
In the earlier part of this year, Polly Samson, the wife of his former bandmate David Gilmour, accused Waters of antisemitism.
During a digital dispute over Israel and the conflict in Ukraine in February, Samson branded Waters as “antisemitic to your rotten core” and labelled her husband’s former bandmate as a “Putin apologist,” exclaiming: “Enough of your nonsense”.
In response, Waters, on his official account, stated he was “aware of the incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments made about him on Twitter by Polly Samson which he refutes entirely”. He also mentioned: “He is currently taking advice as to his position.”
