Gallery: March for Palestine

Photography and text by Larissa Larsen

Berlin — 21 June 2025

I stood in front of the Reichstag with my camera, surrounded by more than 50,000 people — one of the largest pro-Palestine protests Germany has seen in years. The energy was overwhelming. People had come from all over — Berlin, other cities in Germany, even from outside the country — carrying signs, keffiyehs, drums, and a deep sense of urgency. The message was clear: stop the slaughter in Gaza. Justice, freedom, and dignity for Palestinians — not tomorrow, now.

As a Brazilian living in Berlin, it’s hard not to feel the weight of history pressing down on this place. The Reichstag is a symbol of German democracy rebuilt after horror. But what unfolded that day — not just the protest, but the state’s response to it — felt like a betrayal of the very values this democracy claims to stand for. In recent months, Germany has banned Palestinian organisations, raided cultural spaces, and blocked peaceful gatherings — all in the name of security, hate speech, public order. But when you're on the street, you feel it differently. You feel how the state picks and chooses which voices get to be heard.

There’s a contradiction here that’s hard to ignore. Germany’s national identity is built on the memory of the Holocaust — never again, they say. But watching the government not only turn a blind eye to Gaza, but actively support the very state carrying out this devastation — through arms deals, diplomatic cover, and silence where there should be outrage — it feels like never again has become never again for some, not for all.

As I photographed the protest — posters that screamed grief, faces lit with fury, kids chanting with their parents — I kept thinking: this is democracy. Dissent, resistance, the refusal to look away. But in Germany right now, it feels like that kind of speech is being treated as a threat, not a right. I came home that night with a full memory card and a heavy heart. The images I took — they’re not neutral. They carry a demand: that those in power be held accountable for what they support, and that never again means never again for everyone.

Palestine will be free.