Posted on 12/11/2003 2:47:09 PM PST by yonif
BERLIN - Almost 70 percent of Germans say they are annoyed at being held responsible for the Holocaust and many believe Jews use Germany's Nazi past to their advantage, a major German university survey showed on Thursday.
The survey by Bielefeld University showed 69.9 percent were irritated at still being held responsible today for crimes against Jews.
A quarter of 3,000 people surveyed also agreed with the statement: "Many Jews try to use Germany's Third Reich past to their advantage and want to make Germans pay for it". A further 30 percent said there was "some truth" to the statement.
Almost two thirds said they believed too many foreigners live in Germany, while 30 percent said foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.
Some 60 years after the end of World War Two, Germany is still haunted by guilt and it has spent decades debating how to atone for the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
Endorsing the survey, German parliamentary president Wolfgang Thierse said he understood why so many wanted to shed the guilt for what happened before they were born. He said the survey did not prove there is widespread anti-Jewish sentiment.
"It's a surprising figure at first. But when you think about the thought process behind it, it is understandable," he said. "The people alive now are not the perpetrators."^ There was a new distinction between guilt and a responsibility to stop history repeating itself, he said.
The authors of the survey said they found Germans who are worried about security threats and losing their jobs had become more hostile to Jews, Muslims and immigrants.
"Particularly with regard to the jobs market, foreigners are increasingly seen as a burden," said Wilhelm Heitmeyer from Bielefeld University, whose study is set to run to 2032.
One in 10 German workers is unemployed and more than a quarter of the survey's respondents said they expected to lose their job in the next five years. People found life increasingly hard and were looking for scapegoats, said Heitmeyer.
Some 7.3 million foreigners live in Germany, which has a population of just over 82 million. Three million of those foreigners are Muslims, mostly of Turkish origin.
The 2003 survey, the second to be carried out by the university, introduced some new questions but also repeated ones from 2002. The comparison showed xenophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism and sexism had all risen slightly.
Thierse said the results were "not grounds for hysteria". "I have looked at studies in other countries and my impression is this problem is not specifically German, in a European context we are no different to other countries."
New questions in the survey also highlighted hostility towards Germany's three million Muslims and the authors warned attacks by Islamist groups could lead to more tension.
Indeed, more than a quarter of respondents said Muslims should not be allowed to come to Germany.
Basel Allozy from the German-Muslim integration group Inssan said the figure was not surprising. "It's high time people start dealing with anti-Islamism. The expression needs to become an everyday one because the problem has existed for a while.
Anyhow, Germans have this psychological thing hanging over them. Most of them weren't even alive when the Holocaust occured, but like them, I certainly wouldn't want that happening in my country at any stage of it's history.
It would be interesting to see just who they do hold responsible.
How about the people who actually committed the crimes?
Please explain why a 30 year old German should be held accountable, morally and financially, for acts done before he was born
That may be, but they killed a whole bunch of Jews, I mean a whole lot.... not to mention the Russians and Christians.
If the United States continues to pay the "price for slavery", it is because Americans allow themselves to be saddled with something for which they are innocent.
Wounds heal when the wounded desire healing above all else, and when they realize that keeping a wound alive injures no one but themselves.
Remember, psychobabble sometimes works on individuals, but seldom or never on nations.
Really interesting theory. What's your basis for it? The reparations movement here is rather new, and not picking up any steam in the mainstream far as I can tell. Perhaps your theory, and the way you try to ape a black accent, says more about you than blacks?
Why are we held responsible for what we did to the Indians? What we did was bad. What the Germans did was worse. Much worse. Too may Jewish lives have been affected -- why must their German counterparts be allowed a clean slate?
I also think, as a Jew, that the American Jewish community is too dependant on the Holocaust as a source of Jewish identity. Far too much of what parents teach their children about "what it means to be Jewish" revolves around death and destruction and genocide-- rather than Jewish culture, Jewish religion, Jewish history pre-1932 etc. It's quite sad actually.
My only wish is they would raise the voting age.
I guess you just don't get it. The Holocaust is one of those little facts that makes every one want to squirm. "It wasn't me".... meanwhile, pump money into causes like Palestinian terrorism thinking your guilt is assuaged. The problem NEVER went away - it was just TRANSFERRED. And cowards like yourself, by allowing a transference are conducting a second holocaust.
The Nazis killed millions more Christians than they did Jews.Did you not know that? Or do you just not care about dead Christians? I don't see anyone paying their descendants reparations.
The Bolsheviks and Stalinists killed far more people that the Nazis did. There's no museum in the United States to commemorate those slaughters and no movement still trying to get reparations for it
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