Posted on 04/12/2005 4:46:09 PM PDT by SJackson
German prosecutors have provoked outrage by ruling that the 1945 RAF bombing of Dresden can legally be termed a "holocaust".
The decision follows the refusal by the Hamburg public prosecutor's office to press charges against a Right-wing politician who compared the bombing raids to "the extermination of the Jews".
German law forbids the denial or playing down of the Holocaust as an incitement to hatred.
So delicate is the subject of the slaughter of Jews under Hitler that any use of the word "holocaust", or comparison with it, faces intense scrutiny and sometimes legal action.
But prosecutors have declined to pursue further the case of Udo Voigt, the chairman of the far-Right NPD, who likened the RAF's raids to the Nazis' "final solution".
Rudigger Bagger, a spokesman for the Hamburg public prosecutor, said the decision took into account only the criminal, not the moral, aspects of the case.
But he cited as a legal precedent a ruling by the federal constitutional court that favoured free speech in political exchanges, if defamation was not the prime aim of the argument.
Holger Apfel, the NPD's leader in the Saxon regional parliament, caused a scandal in January when he shouted down a commemoration of the Dresden bombing, prompting many others to walk out in disgust.
His outburst was covered by parliamentary privilege but Mr Voigt applauded and repeated the statements elsewhere.
Paul Spiegel, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, criticised the decision by prosecutors not to take action. He said the statements were incitement and allowing them to stand opened the door to further such comments.
"Morally, I have no understanding of this," he said. "One can ban such remarks if you use the law consistently. It is questionable whether statements that are clearly incitement come under freedom of expression."
Although the NPD is despised by other parties, German politicians reluctantly accepted the ruling.
Dieter Wiefelspüetz, the interior spokesman for the Social Democrat Party described the phrase "holocaust" in the context of Dresden as an "exploitation of the victims". But he supported the decision not to prosecute.
Attitudes towards the Allied bombing campaign, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, are changing. Estimates of the death toll in Dresden in February 1945 hover at about 35,000. All the same, some historians claim that as many as 500,000 people were killed in the raids.
Strictly speaking, the word "holocaust," which comes from the ancient Greek for "burnt", might seem apt for Dresden, much of it immolated by the fires started by the RAF's incendiary bombs.
But its primary meaning is now so closely linked to the Nazis' treatment of the Jews that such etymology appears to be in bad taste.
Thank you for your service! I was fortunate to only serve in a peacetime, U.S.Army, in Germany.
So, here goes .... A BIG THANKS TO YOU!!
Regards!!
"How do they characterize the blitz of London?"
-----as an unsuccessful Holocaust.
Really nice. All the name-calling proves who the idiot asshole is.
Germany always has had a vested interest in bringing up their own suffering during WW2, and the bombing of Dresden
is as good an example as any. The only way they can mitigate the horrors of what they did is to try to create
some kind of equivalence in what was done to THEM. It is
sort of a hydraulic relieving of the awful pressure of collective guilt at having perpetrated something that they will NEVER be able to live down historically. The behavior of the Germans under Hitler will continue to be emblematic of just how unprecedentedly awful the behavior of the so-called cultured and civilized can be.
And what you will not hear the left media tell you is Hitler and his ilk were pagans and artists and into the occult.
I read a post about a month ago that suggested that if the US did not join in WWI, France, England, and Germany
would have settled the ongoing war on terms other than the vindictive Treaty of Versailles, and as such, would
have avoided the conditions that led to Hiter's rise to power.
Any way, I took an "Intro to Western Religion" course in college, and the prof said that the US was about
60 years behind Germany in philosophical trends...
It was a big war ~ many seemingly unconnected events were actually extremely important to the final outcome.
The Japanese invasion of China precipitated a chain of events that's still going on ~ to wit: North Korea's nuclear warheads and missiles!
It's very important to not limit our considerations to Europe alone ~ in this particular World War Europe was but a mere theatre!
There are people on this thread who don't have a clue why the Russians were even in WWII and why the US and USSR were allies!
In 1943 no one would have understood why we weren't!
There are several reasons for this, among them that there were no more targets left in Tokyo itself! COnventional bombing destroyed everything worth hitting.
Many young Germans I have met in my travels have been very good people.
If you don't believe me ask a slave!
Pax Israelica or Pax Moshiach.
Which one was prophesied to eventually have ultimate sovereignty over the Holy Land ?
Vox Populi is very fluid and can change like the wind. True prophecy however is immutable.
Thank God we crushed the Klan when we did.
The title of this article is misleading. The ruling does not say that Dresden was a Holocaust. It simply rules that use of the word "BombenHolocaust" does not violate German laws against "Volksverhetzung" (basically hate speech) and "Verhamlosung" (trivialization) of the Holocaust.
As usual, rulings on hate speech vs free speech are a fine line but I think they generally made the right call on this one.
Come on, fess up, this is really Ward Churchill isn´t it?
OF course not. I implied "Japan was nuked" and corrected that with a post right after that.
My point is two Japanese cities were nuked, Tokyo and Dresden were firebombed (and probably killed as many people as the nukes), and these two nations today have no taste for war, one has a Constitution that forbids offensive action, and they are our friends today.
Bringing the horror of war (including massive civilian casualties) has a tendency to make a nation hate war.
Today's soldier fighting soldier, and today's politically correct "don't attack the mosque, even though it is an enemy bunker" style of warfare is a road to continual nonstop warfare.
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