Jacob Heilbrunn, a senior editor at The New Republic, penned an essay yesterday titled "Will Germany Deny The Past?"
Speaking like a true Chosenite, as the name would seem to imply, Mr. Heilbrunn laments the waning of enthusiasm for Holocaust Memorials and such in Germany.
Commenting on the German election to take place one week from today, Mr. Heilbrunn thinks that Gerhard Schroeder, a Social Democrat, is favored to defeat Chancellor Kohl.
He further believes that it might happen because Mr. Kohl supports the controversial Holocaust memorial in the center of Berlin, near the Brandenburg Gate and the American Embassy, whereas Mr. Schroeder does not.
"In so doing," writes Mr. Heilbrunn, "Mr. Schroeder has recklessly politicized the Holocaust."
I want to quote you some salient pieces from this article.
"The issue had been dormant. Now Mr. Schroeder, encouraged by Michael Naumann, a former book publisher whom Mr. Schroeder has recruited as a possible culture minister, has said that Germany should become a "self- assured" nation and that a memorial would set the wrong tone.
'He wants German- American ties to be 'more strongly determined by visions of the future than by the burden of the past.'
Mr. Neumann, Mr, Heilbrunn fears, believes that
". . . instead of constructing a memorial, Germans should rebuild Kaiser Wilhelm's palace, which was demolished by East German Communists after World War II."
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Mourns Mr. Heilbrunn:
"Such demagogy is a remarkable change for the Social Democratic Party. Traditionally it has emphasized contrition and repentance for the German past. When Willy Brandt, a Social Democrat, was Chancellor, his most famous act was to fall to his knees at the Warsaw ghetto in December 1970."
Then Mr. Heilbrunn wags a disapproving finger:
"Neither Mr. Schroeder's nor Mr. Naumann's stated reasons for, in effect, abandoning this tradition are remotely persuasive. The memorials at concentration camps far from Berlin do not serve the same purpose that a memorial in the center of the new German capital would."
Yet Mr. Schroeder's position, claims Mr. Heilbrunn, has received the support of many intellectuals on the left as well as the right. Furthermore, a recent poll indicated that a majority of Berliners are against the memorial.
Young intellectuals on the right, says Mr. Heilbrunn, oppose the memorial
". . . because they want to create a self-confident Berlin republic that dispenses with the self- effacement of the defunct cold war Bonn republic. Writing in the daily Die Welt, Tilman Krause, an essayist for the paper, hailed 'an end to leftist national masochism.'
'What nation would come up with the idea of putting the most horrible acts of its own history in such an exposed position in gigantic dimensions in its capital?' Mr. Krause asked."
Which leads to your Thought for the Day:
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
(Mark Twain)