Posted on 05/10/2005 6:23:48 PM PDT by M. Espinola
BERLIN _ Germany opened a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin on Tuesday, marking the 60th anniversary of the Nazi regime's capitulation, as many young people here ponder over whether they should be continually apologetic for crimes they did not commit.
Even though German politicians, such as Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, do not hesitate using terms like ``shame'' for its past and even asking for ``forgiveness'' for Adolf Hitler's atrocities, many of the post-war generation in Germany seem to think the country has already done enough to come to terms with the past.
"Germany made many apologies and I think that's enough," Thilo Weber, a 36-year-old resident in Berlin, said in front of the monument, which is composed of 2,711 undulating, concrete columns at a site almost the size of three football fields, near the central Brandenburg Gate.
A recent poll shows that as many as 60 percent of Germans say they are tired of being reminded of Nazi's killing of 6 million Jews, according to a May 5th article of the Economist. The U.K. weekly added that much German media coverage of the 60th anniversary of the end of the war has focused on German suffering.
German people's hopes of shaking off the guilty feeling about the past also led many of them to oppose construction of the Holocaust monument. ``Historic events should be commemorated,'' Weber said, ``but Berlin is already crowded with monuments remembering German atrocities and the Nazi era.''
Hundreds of memorials can be spotted in Germany, from museums for concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, to brass bricks embedded in the pavement outside houses, naming the Jews who once lived there.
The design of the new Holocaust monument, which a tourist described as a ``stone garden,'' has also been a subject of hot debate. Manfred Schrof, who was born in West Germany in 1946, carped at the 35.5-million-dollar memorial, saying it will be good only for young couples to play games of ``hide-and-seek.''
``The monument is composed of nothing but chunk of cement,'' said Schrof, who works in construction in Berlin. ``The gesture of apology should rather come in the form of building universities or hospitals for the poor so that the next generation can get help and learn the past.''
Such complaints on the unattractive design, huge construction costs and politicians' ``excessive'' low-profiling toward the past might explain why those large-scale, right-wing demonstrations have been held in Berlin over the past few days.
Thousands of skin-heads and neo-Nazis held a series of protests near the Brandenburg Gate, shouting ``an end to the cult of guilt.'' In one march near Alexander Platz in the city center, the number of protesters reached 3,300, according to police.
German media said the number of participants in peaceful candlelight vigils in central Berlin had dwarfed that of right-wing marchers. But the situation could reverse later, given that the young generation in Germany are not aware of the painful history.
According to a poll conducted in April by the independent research institute Forschungsgruppe Wahlen for public broadcaster ZDF and the newspaper Die Welt, only 51.4 percent of Germans under the age of 24 were able to identify the Holocaust as the Nazi's campaign to eradicate European Jews.
Dr. Peter Prufert, director of the International Institute for Journalism in the Capacity Building International, a private think tank in Berlin, however, said that the result of the poll is ``not very surprising.''
``This is simply due to the fact that many of today's youngsters might not understand the meaning of Holocaust, an English word which had not been used in German up to five years ago,'' he said. ``They might know when they are asked about the extermination campaign against the Jews during the Nazi time though.''
If he is right, is theory is right, we are unlikely to see larger right-wing demonstrations in future, even though the hopes of average Germans to be free of Holocaust guilt might become stronger over the next decades.
Photos added
It's hard to "remain" something when you haven't even started.
absurd there are no young couples in Germany.
Well taken point.
It is now time for the Jews to rehabilitate all Germans. The Jew must accept the appologies of the German and move on. Most of the Jews bitterness towards the German, IMHO, is the rejection of them by the ordinary German in the late 1930's. The German Jew considered themselves Germans. The "country turned" on them just like a brother or sister might do. The Jew today, IMHO, is mostly bitter because of this "sibling" rejection.
Interesting opinion. No doubt the Jews of Germany considered themselves German, and one of the many reasons they did not awaken to the fate that awaited them was because they considered themselves German citizens, and many had fought for Germany in WWI.
I can sympathize with the Germans in a way, because there are many, many memorials all throughout Germany to the Holocaust 60 years ago, and it's more than enough of a time interval that most Germans had no part in the horror, but the simple truth, to me, is that we should NEVER FORGET what happened.
Those that do not learn from the past are cursed to repeat it.
I've been to Dachau and seen the memorial there. I think every European should visit it before graduating High School.
This whole holocaust thing would be so much more convenient if it just hadn't happened.
- is the typical German sentiment toward it, in my observation.
But I must qualify though; I know some Germans who are deeply grieved and remorseful for it.
To a 'young' person born after the core source of all of this, I would have to agree.
Look at the deep social, cultural, and psycological impact Slavery has in the USA. And this is after 3-4 generations and a civil war to end it.
Meanwhile there are 'young' people in Germany, whos fathers and grandfathers tried to take over the world, intentionally killing thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent men, women, and children... driven by this ideology that could be described as 'racism of relgion', that genuinely feel they are on the "moral high ground" about Iraq and feel perfectly comfortable wagging a finger at the USA for 'human rights abuses' like the Pope on Sunday.
I'm not saying they aren't sorry for anything... but they certainly 'got over their sins' awefully quickly (probably has something to do with the permissive socialism)
Londoner here, domiciled Canada. Survived WW2 bombing. Says I, thank God yer missed me!. 70,000 British died. 500,000 Germans,in the bombing raids. I will wisely temper what I really want to say but.... "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn". Robert Burns, Scotlands own gift to human kind, plus Sir Alexander Fleming.
Sadly, there are those who wish to visit on ONE group of people a terrible crime,to the exclusion of others. We know them.
Incidentally, it has been placed very close to the site of Hitler's Reich Chancellory.
Sadly, there are those who wish to visit on ONE group of people a terrible crime,to the exclusion of others. We know them.
Are you trying to compare German who died in the bombing raids to the British who died in the German bombing raids or even people who died in the Holocaust?
All the Germans who died in WW2 got what they DESERVED! They democractically elected the Nazis, and they all took part in the mass mob attacks upon Jews! The Germans knew what was happening in the concentration camps and were GLAD! They gladly took the homes and wealth of Jews who were stripped naked and shoved into gas chambers and ovens.
Showing sypmathy for those Germans is like showing sypmathy for Muslims who danced on the streets on 9/11 when they get whats coming to them!
How many years more should Germans apologize for the Holocaust in your opinion ?
Interesting.
Surely you have heard of individual and collective guilt?
"IMHO, is mostly bitter because of this "sibling" rejection."
Yes, of the Cain and Abel type.
How about they're bitter because the Germans eliminated half their fellow Jews in the world.
You make the profound sound petty.
Its not about apologizing, but remembering so you dont repeat the same mistake.
I don't know or remember slavery in the south. I read it in a book.
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