[M. Espinola]

`

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

It's hard to "remain" something when you haven't even started.

[CzarNicky]

..., carped at the 35.5-million-dollar memorial, saying it will be good only for young couples to play games of ``hide-and-seek.''

absurd there are no young couples in Germany.

[Blake#1]

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.

[VoiceOfBruck]

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.

[FreedomNeocon]

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)

[skeeter]

Its commemorative value aside, the monument is fugly. I at first thought it was a staging area for building materials, or an incomplete foundatio for some huge building. Even the temporary signs placed in front of it were nondescriptive.

Incidentally, it has been placed very close to the site of Hitler's Reich Chancellory.

[Grzegorz 246]

How many years more should Germans apologize for the Holocaust in your opinion ?

[bmwcyle]

I don't know or remember slavery in the south. I read it in a book.

[Americanexpat]

I am not as good a writer as some Freepers but will try to express my opinion without causing rancor. Someone brought up the point that most of the people responsible for the Holocaust have died of old age. Most of the people who liberated those camps at the end of the war have died too. Now we have people coming behind them saying the Holocaust never happened. There are millions of kids getting an education today that can't tell you about the Korean or Vietnam wars. By the end of the next generation they won't know squat about WWII. We cannot afford to let the world forget about the Holocaust.

I would like to see China and Russia build memorials to the at least 60 million innocent people murdered for their revolutions. No one seems to care or remember that.

One of the reasons for WWII was the resentment and humiliation of the armistice treaty at the end of WWI. Will the resentment and humiliation of the Germans cause a repeat of these events?

[ozzymandus]

The Germans will have to pay lip service to the holocaust until the end of time, but the youngest Germans who were even alive during the war are in their 60's now, and had nothing to do with the crimes of their parents. I wonder how long the Russians will be held responsible for the crimes of the USSR, which murdered far more people than Nazi Germany. As far as I can see, the Russians haven't been held responsible at all.

[Atlantic Bridge]

"....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...."

This is completely wrong. The word holocaust has its roots in the greek "holókauton" which means complete "burnt offering". The word is used since 1979 in Germany, when the US-television series "Holocaust" was shown on German TV. All youngsters in Germany know exactly about the meaning of the shoa (or holocaust). It is a fixed part on every German school curriculum. Most Germans have visited a former concentration camp. Every (! - that is no joke) day there are documentations or films about the holocaust in the German TV. All important political German magazines like the "Spiegel" work on the issue in every edition.

There is maybe another problem: Those young people playing neo-nazi now, are so overwhelmed with the dark German history, that they are getting sick of it. There is not just the necessary information for the German people released. It turned into a pseudo-religion of the German left, that uses the issue arund the clock for continuous self-depression and whining. This is very problematic, since the young ones understand the lack of truthfulness in those plump attempts.

Another reason might be, that the best way to shock the political correct members of their father's or mother's generation (the 68-generation in Germany - the guys like Schilly and Fischer) is, to mutate into a little Nazi or Skinhead. The funny thing: Exactly those people like Fischer or Schilly used the refurbishment of the German history in turn, to shock their own parents, who where usually really involved into the system of the nazis.

Personally I can not give you any real solution of this problem. My belief is, that the holocaust issue should be transfered in a more honest way to the German public and youth. Of course it is nessecary to keep the information alive, to prevent the oblivion of the shoa and to teach the political conclusions. On the other hand we have to accommodate to the fact, that the real guilty generation will not survive the next 10 years. This will change the handling of the subject in Germany completely. Germans will not forget the guilt of their grandfathers, but they will change to a more future-minded consort with their history.

BTW - Just the really interesting discussion around the new monument made it worth building it. I.e. Other victims like the Roma and Sinti ("gypsies") accused the jewish community of being racist, because Eisenmans' monument is only for the jewish victims. There were other "free riders" like the expelled German persons who tend to revision the outcomes of WWII. They got a clear rejection of their requests through the complete political German class (apart from very few idiots). It turned out that this problem (which still spoils the relationship between Poland, Czechia and Germany will be solved within the next 10 years biologically (like the problem with the last guilty nazis).