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
I agree with you. The point is not empty guilt for the past, but change for the future.
It would be easier to credit German (and European) annoyance at Holocaust memory if anti-Semitic acts and press, demonization of Israel, support for Palestinian terror and incitement, were not at an all time new high since WWII.
Also what about the current genocide in Sudan? Europe not only ignores it but obstructs help.
Thus it appears that no number of memorials has had an impact on the German and European psyche which once again takes an expedient position towards Jews. This time in the name of Muslim appeasement and financial reward.
Please see my post #11. The last time I dealt with WW2 bombing, I was savaged on this web. I stayed off for a week,about a month ago.
Something tells me I should now hold my peace. I will post no more on this subject,following this quote. They know whom this riposte is for- not you. Only the fact that we were told in the war, that the Germans started the civilian bombing, and NOW known that it was LIES. (Re: Wilhelmshafen,German port. Sept 4th 1939) - gives me the unwise decision to post again.
"Always remember others may hate you,but those who hate you don't win,unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself".
Richard Milhouse Nixon.
You said very wise words!!!
In addition, where is the world's demand to see Russia, Japan, China, etc.. live up to their own obligations to recognize their own crimes against humanity??
Do we hold these other nations to the same standard?
What I would like to see Germany (and germans) do, is simply what has been done.. acknowledge their past..
I would also like to see Germany (the state) more involved, in a leadership role, in the issue of Human Rights..
I would suggest that a true reparation for historical wrongs would be a dedication to the principles of Human Rights, the Right to Life, and other such principles and their promotion throughout the world..
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Ping.
Many countries (pretty much every country) has racist pasts,Germany had th Holocaust and others had slavery. The most important thing is to recognise the past and demand that the future be different.
I predict that if we keep following the path of the second treaty of Versailles, we get to see it again.
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