(Among other things) I said: "...film that was shown in Western Germany regarding the Shoah. One American was there and sat in silent horror as virtually the entire audience (including many learned and cultured people) cheered when Jews were murdered."
(Among other things) you said: " One advantage of frequenting FreeRepublic is that one can observe how questionable stories enter the mainstream by being told and retold. Several months ago, an essay by William Grim (a Canadian, not an American) contained an anecdote in which the writer claimed to have sat in a German movie theater showing a film with a WWII/Holocaust setting. According to Grim, the audience tittered and laughed (not cheered) while scenes of persecution of Jews were being shown."
Tictoc, I can appreciate very well that many, perhaps even most, Germans don't pine for the return of the "good old days" under Hitler. I do think that most have learned that brutal, genocidal dictators are not a good thing, and they don't want one in their country or anywhere else. I am sure that many Germans are, as you say, deeply ashamed that their nation (though not them personally) perpetrated this most heinous of crimes. As a Jew who had over 100 distant relatives murdered during the Shoah, I am very glad of this, and as a thinking human being, I certainly don't think that any people is genetically predisposed to such a political system. And, perhaps, Mr. Grim is even a bit biased (though I don't know why he should be, since he is neither Jewish nor a guilt-ridden, self-hating German). HOWEVER, I do think that you need to check your facts regarding William Grim and the movie that we both discussed. I will print it below, in its entirety, along with the website on which it appears, so that you can confirm that this is the case.
More important than discussing one particular writer's impressions of one showing of a particular movie is a discussion of what is going on in Germany. You said: "I tell you categorically that no significant segment of the German population is proud of the Holocaust." Perhaps this is true (I certainly hope so), but neither were the Nazis and their supporters a significant segment of the German population as late as the early 1930's. PERHAPS (and I emphasize that word) things are not so rosey as you think in Germany, PERHAPS you don't know your country as well as you think you do, or PERHAPS you just haven't paid too much attention to some of the uglier undercurrents there. While I don't believe the "scratch a German and find a Nazi" statement or share that attitude, there is a saying in the US that might apply here: "The acorn doesn't fall far from the oak tree." On the surface, especially for the first 50 years after the Shoah, Germans have spoken the right words and (as I said earlier) many, and perhaps most, Germans have really taken these words to heart. But some never did and never will. The simple fact is that SOME Germans did like Hitler very much (just as SOME Iraqis did/do like Hussein very much), and that many of these survived to have and raise kids and grandkids - and for those descendants, this ugly side of German history is nothing to be ashamed of. Again, I will emphasize that this applies to SOME, repeat SOME Germans. I don't think that either of us can possibly know how many, but when it comes to this kind of an attitude (anywhere, not just in Germany), even one is too many.
For the record, William Grim IS an American (your mistake, but a rather harmless one in the scheme of things, as you'll see below). The movie WASN'T "Schindler's List," but "The Pianist" (my mistake, but a rather harmless one in the scheme of things, as you'll see below). Most importantly, the reaction of the audience wasn't nervous laughter or tittering - he mentioned (as you can see below) derisive laughter and a term that I'm sure that you understand (because you speak the language): Schadenfreude. Judge for yourself. Others may also judge for themselves.
The article below appears on the following website:
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=7d15e83c1b5059485a409e623d6bc57c 'The Pianist' Plays Germany - What's So Funny About the Holocaust?
Commentary
William Grim,
Pacific News Service, Jan 08, 2003
To an American living in Germany, anti-Semitic remarks by ordinary Germans -- including derisive laughter at a showing of Roman Polanski's Holocaust film "The Pianist" - - dovetail with hate-crime data and opinion polls to paint a disturbingly familiar picture of an angry, economically
failing nation searching for a scapegoat.
MUNICH--Has Germany really changed since 1945? I used to think so. But after living and working here for two years, I'm not so sure. It's the little things that you notice at first: The casual anti-Semitic remarks, the apoplectic reactions at any mention of the Yiddish language, or business clients who proclaim in meetings that "the Jews control all the money in the world."
After a while, the experiences seem less random and more sinister. One day a group of students I'm helping prepare for their college entrance exams were having trouble with their vocabulary lesson, particularly the word "crematorium." I define the word and one student pulls out a cigarette lighter, flicks it on and says, "So, Jueden-Oven." His classmates do likewise.
This was a private, upper middle-class school well-known for its left-wing politics. It's Friday evening in Munich and I'm walking past the Museum Lichtspiele Theater where Roman Polanski's new Holocaust film, "The Pianist," is playing. The theater is an art house, catering to the tastes of the Munich's cosmopolitan elite. On the spur of the moment, I decide to see the movie.
There are about 200 people in the audience, mostly white, good-looking, expensively attired young urban professionals in their late 20s and early 30s. Undoubtedly all are well-educated, well-heeled and sophisticated, representative of the "new" Germany, the Germany we are told has severed all ties to its Nazi past. There isn't a skinhead to be seen. As far as I can tell, I'm the only American.
The film's gruesome scenes pile on top of one another with frightening intensity. I'm having trouble holding back the tears. Since I'm one of those males who views crying as unmanly, I furtively look around the room in embarrassment to see if anyone has seen me daubing my eyes. What I see are smiling faces.
On screen, a Jewish family is brutally murdered by the SS. This time, the smiling faces are accompanied by laughter -- not nervous laughter or the laughter of shame, but Schadenfreude, pure and simple.
Later in the movie, an SS guard remarks how clever the Jews are at making money. This time the audience breaks out in full-blown guffaws so loud you'd think we were watching "Caddyshack."
Do these personal anecdotes add up to a Germany yearning to return to the glory days of the Third Reich? The political and economic situation of Germany in 2002 has an uncanny resemblance to that of Germany in 1932, the last year of the Weimar Republic. And that's not just my opinion. It's also that of Oskar Lafontaine, the former German finance minister.
The German economy continues to be ravaged by mistakes that are largely the fault of the Germans themselves: completely inflexible employment laws making it almost impossible to create new jobs; confiscatory taxes that are raised continuously; mistrust of innovation, experimentation, creativity and entrepreneurship; and a rapacious political class that makes the American Congress look like mendicant friars.
With an "official" unemployment rate of 10 percent that expands to somewhere between 20 to 40 percent in certain poor provinces of the former German Democratic Republic, it is clear to all that Germany is in an economic and political malaise. The response of Germans to this malaise, however, is where the comparisons between 2002 and 1932 become the most ominous.
Ask why Germany is in economic trouble and you'll seldom hear Germans blame themselves. The most common response is to blame foreigners, that is, Turkish "guest workers," immigrants from the former Iron Curtain countries, and Jews. In the eyes of most Germans, the Turks and the Eastern immigrants are taking jobs away from "real" Germans, and the reparation payments to compensate the victims of the Holocaust are responsible for deficits in the German budget.
Statistics suggest that anti-Semitism is becoming more commonplace in Germany. Reported anti-Semitic crimes in Germany -- from graveyard desecration to murder -- rose from 574 cases in 1998 to 1,424 in 2001, according to the Stephen Roth Institute of Tel-Aviv University. It based this on figures from the German Federal Office for the Defense of the Constitution.
Perhaps even more alarming are surveys reported by the Roth Institute showing that 16 percent of all recruits to the Germany Army support extreme right-wing political parties, all of which feature virulent anti-Semitism as part of their political platforms.
It is this tendency of many Germans to blame the non-German "other" for their country's problems that has had such devastating consequences for Germany and the rest of the world in the past century. And so, as Germany sinks further into an economic abyss, it remains to be seen whether or not the Germans who laughed during the screening of "The Pianist" are the harbingers of a Third Reich Redux or just well-dressed vulgarians. If the past is indeed prelude to the future, the signs are not encouraging. Quo vadis, Germania?
Grim is a writer and businessman who moved to Germany two years ago from Columbus, Ohio.