Germany has learned the wrong lesson from its past
JVL Introduction
Here a great niece of a Wermacht leader under the Nazis, writes that Germany is failing to learn the lessons of that terrible era. There is perhaps ‘amnesia’ over the fact that Jews were not the only victims; from the beginning especially Trade Unionists, Socialists and Communists were attacked. Yet it suits current world leaders to see that history only through the lens of the horrendous near destruction of Eastern European Jewry and ignore what the Nazis did in terms of press freedom (Julian Assange, anyone?) or the importance of Trade Union Rights and even Occupation of others’ lands.
Of course it is right that Germany (and all countries) learn not to oppress Jews but, as the writer says “… simplistic thinking appears to be leading my country into forgetting yet another lesson of the Nazi era: the danger of falling prey to rightwing fanatics. I have no doubt that good intentions – fuelled by repentance – underpin the unconditional German support for Israel.
But in our desire to paint the world in black and white – with the role of victim reserved for Israelis, who are seen as westerners, and the role of perpetrators assigned to Arabs, seen as other – we find ourselves in perverse alignment with authoritarians: with Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightwing nationalist government, with white nationalists in the US and with the far-right AfD party at home.”
LL
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Sun 7 Apr 2024. Read the original here.
My family’s past, and Germany’s, weighs heavily upon me. And it’s why I feel so strongly about Gaza
I fear we are forgetting lessons from that terrible history
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Thank you to Leah and JVL for agreeing to my request to republish this really interesting article. The aspect that engaged my feelings most was about how to treat perpetrators.
My parents – Hungarian Jewish on one side, Irish Protestant on the other — both felt that once a war was over the thing to do was start again. I remember their disgust when 80- and 90- year old Nazi perpetrators were tracked down and prosecuted decades later.
By contrast the Jewish Socialist group position (as I saw it) was that there should be no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity.
Years later again, when I saw how survivors of the Bosnian genocide have to live alongside neighbours who’d raped them or driven them from their homes; and when I learned how perpetrators of the Roma Holocaust/ Porrajmos had lived long and comfortable postwar lives, often in positions of power to influence ongoing persecution and exclusion in the Czech Republic, I felt in two minds.
I still do!
Rwanda is one of the most difficult examples. The ‘international community’ couldn’t be arsed to pay for a sustained judicial process for Africans. The result has been a dictatorship. We were also often uninformed about the colonial roots of the conflict, and the results in Burundi as well.
To return to the Holocaust, the Nuremberg trials were instituted partly because of reprisals that were taking place all over Europe. For example in three months several thousand Sudeten Germans had been killed in ‘wild expulsions’ from Czechoslovakia before the government took over and expelled that whole population. I know of individual killings of informers that took place after the war ended when survivors returned. Human rights law and the genocide convention were partly inspired by the hope of breaking this cycle.
So how do we do it, tell me! I’m hoping the JVL comments will be outspoken and full of insight.
“It is entirely natural for Germany to feel burdened by guilt when it comes to the Jewish people.”
This is far too easy an explanation. If Germany really “feels burdened by guilt” then Germany should have provided German land for a Jewish State. Why should Palestinians suffer for Germany’s guilt ?
And on an even more fundamental level Germany’s attitude is completely unacceptable. Germany’s romance with Zionism allows it to maintain the myth that Jews are “the other” a race apart whose real home is in Palestine not Germany. But actually the real tragedy of the Holocaust is that Germans murdered fellow Germans who happened to be Jews.
European Jews belong in Europe, European Jews deserve to feel safe in Europe and it is a sacred obligation on us European non Jews to ensure that our Jewish sisters and brothers feel welcome, safe and valued.
Half of Israeli Jews do not come from Europe, where do they belong?
Read Avi Shlaim’s Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n08/eyal-weizman/diary
The colonial origins of German genocide.
The author says that good intentions and repentance underpin the [German State’s] unconditional support for Israel. This would suggest the German politicians don’t understand what they are doing. Of course they do: they backing a bulwark for imperialism in the middle east and it is a policy completely in line with the interests of their own imperialism. (I say German state, because most German people do not support Israel’s attack on Gaza).
As for repentance,that is belied by the releases of war criminals and the stopping of trials in the 1950s (when it mattered), motivated partly by the turn to anti-communism, but also by the large numbers of ex-nazis in the police, judiciary and civil service at that time, as the article below outlines:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/14/europe/germany-nazi-war-trials-grm-intl/index.html
It is encouraging that a German commentator recognises publicly that her country has learned wrong lessons from its past, though of course she lives in London and published her piece in a British newspaper; would or could she have done so in Germany? Still, she rightly describes the racism underpinning German policy and discourse towards Palestine and the dangerous rightward drift of German politics and society, not just in the AfD, but in all the main parties.
But as others have pointed out, there is still a fundamental flaw in this apparent recognition of German failure to learn. Ladipo still calls “solidarity with the Jewish state” “a sacred obligation”, talks of the “redemptive foundation of Israel” and has “no doubt that good intentions – fuelled by repentance – underpin the unconditional German support for Israel.” This sadly misrepresents what happened.
Awaiting trial, General Warlimont and other senior commanders wrote a self-serving history of the German army and high command, whitewashing their crimes and creating the myth of the ‘Clean Wehrmacht’, noble soldiers who fought honourably and bravely for their country. The truth of massive Wehrmacht atrocities took decades to be told. Meanwhile, German society comforted itself that the crimes had been committed by a small band of evil perpetrators.
As well as allowing entry to the US-led western alliance, support for Israel was and remains important for this collective redemptive myth. In return for German financial, military and diplomatic support, Israel turned a blind eye to the continued participation of prominent Nazis in German public life, notably Chancellor Adenauer’s chief of staff Hans Globke, but he was far from alone.
And so even today., support for Israel provides for the German establishment a self-righteous cover for rising racism, new nationalism and militarism and a steady drift to the right.
Thank you for being so courageous in writing this article