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."
>
> References
>
> 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§ion=%2Fnews%2Fnationworld%2Fworld%2Fwire
)
>