ZGram - 8/8/2002 - "AP Release: Germans attack post-Holocaust taboos"

irimland@zundelsite.org irimland@zundelsite.org
Thu, 8 Aug 2002 07:50:13 -0700


ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

August 8, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

This one you have to read between the lines!  Unmistakeable signs of 
a national awakening, exactly as Francis Parker Yockey predicted: 
The enemy in full retreat, desperately hurling its shopworn 
shibboleths!

[START]

Germans Attack Post-Holocaust Taboos

By TONY CZUCZKA

Associated Press Writer

August 3, 2002, 12:52 PM EDT

BERLIN -- For a nation that swore off nationalism after World War II,
Germany is having an unusual election campaign. Taboos that once 
muted any serious discussion of the topic are being cracked -- not by 
some far-right fringe, but by the two main candidates.

One is Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. In May he publicly debated the 
meaning of patriotism with a popular author who has enraged Jews by 
saying that the Holocaust is used as "a moral bludgeon" on Germans.

Schroeder's conservative challenger, meanwhile, has engaged in a war 
of words with the Czech Republic on behalf of ethnic Germans who were 
expelled at the end of the war.

Germany's last election four years ago focused attention on the 
arrival of the "Berlin Republic" -- the government's return to a 
capital with a Nazi past, under the first chancellor young enough to 
have no memory of the war.

The parliamentary election in September is shaping up as a test of 
German reflexes as much of Europe moves to the right. Alarming for 
many, even open anti-Semitism has been revived in German mainstream 
politics as well as cultural life.

  "It's partly about the issue of national identity," said Andrei 
Markovits, a German history professor at the University of Michigan.
"The Germans somehow want to exorcise Auschwitz. But it will still be 
a stigma for at least a number of decades."

  Germans have debated the limits of national pride and their yearning 
to be a "normal" nation ever since east and west reunited in 1990, 
re-creating a big Germany of 83 million people at the heart of Europe.

  The differing approaches were evident in May, when Schroeder and 
novelist Martin Walser argued the point in a public debate. Where 
Walser tied nationalism to emotions, Schroeder spoke of not feeling 
his German identity until age 10, when the German soccer team won the 
1954 World Cup. Where Schroeder urged Germans to take pride in their 
post-World War II accomplishments, Walser delved into the post-World 
War I peace that in his much-disputed view helped pave the way for 
Nazism.

  Schroeder's challenger, Edmund Stoiber, has also turned his sights 
to the past, strongly suggesting that the Czech Republic be barred 
from joining the European Union until revokes the decrees that exiled 
the Sudeten Germans in 1945.

It's a touchy subject, given collaboration of Sudeten German leaders 
with Hitler. The last conservative chancellor, Helmut Kohl, had hoped 
to heal the wound five years ago when he signed a 1997 treaty on good 
relations with Prague.

  Stoiber also insists that Germans need not shy away from debating 
curbs on the country's liberal immigration policy, rooted partly in a 
will to atone for Nazi race laws.

  He says the mainstream conservatives he represents must raise the 
issue "responsibly" to prevent the rise of far-right politicians like 
France's Jean-Marie Le Pen and Joerg Haider in Austria.

  Those views don't appear to have hurt Stoiber's campaign. Polls show 
that Schroeder is more popular than Stoiber, but the conservative 
camp led by the Bavarian governor is ahead of the chancellor's Social 
Democrats.

  Postwar German society, ever fearful of any hint of tolerance for 
the forces that gave rise to Hitler, has tended to shun displays of 
nationalism, even dumping the first stanza of its anthem to get rid 
of  "Deutschland Ueber Alles." Germans have also tended to avoid 
issues such as the Sudeten expulsion, lest they be accused of 
portraying themselves as the victim.

  As for anti-Semitism, Germans have long reassured themselves that it 
was firmly banished to the far-right fringe, which holds no seats in 
parliament.

  But even that taboo has come under attack -- from a respected party 
that helped build Germany's postwar democracy and from Walser, whose 
latest novel was condemned by critics as pandering to anti-Jewish 
stereotypes.

  The opposition Free Democratic Party, yearning to return to its old 
role as coalition partner in the next government, injected tones 
widely viewed as anti-Semitic into its populist campaign strategy.

  Its deputy leader, Juergen Moellemann, was already known as a 
supporter of the Arab cause, but he stirred outrage when he warned 
that Michel Friedman, a Jewish TV talk show host, might fuel
anti-Semitism with his "intolerant, spiteful style."

  Forced to apologize, Moellemann said he was asserting Germans' right 
to criticize Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. But many 
critics felt he was insinuating that Jews are to blame for 
anti-Semitism.

"This is the treacherous thing," said Wolfgang Benz, head of the 
Center for Anti-Semitism Studies at Berlin's Technical University. 
"Latent resentment of Jews has been around for years, but no 
democratic party ever set its sights on it."

Meanwhile, Walser's new novel, "Death of a Critic," has gone straight 
to the top of the best-seller list, accompanied by furious 
controversy over the unflattering portrayal of its main character -- 
a Jewish Holocaust survivor modeled on Germany's best-known literary 
critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki.

  One of Germany's most respected newspapers, Frankfurter Allgemeine 
Zeitung, called the book a "document of hate" and refused to 
serialize it.

  Walser insists the book is a comedy about the power of critics and 
the media and is not anti-Semitic. German Jewish novelist Rafael 
Seligmann agrees, though he thinks the novelist has "crazy ideas," 
and Germany's best-known author, Guenter Grass, has called the 
attacks on Walser "close to character assassination."
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>  References
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>     1.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-breaking-taboos0803aug03.story

[END]

( Source: 
http://www.newsday.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=sns%2Dap%2Dbreaking%2Dtaboos0803aug03&section=%2Fnews%2Fnationworld%2Fworld%2Fwire 
)
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