Is That Legal?

I am saddened to hear that Germans are still struggling with their national guilt. I hope Germans learn to love their country again for all the right reasons, to make a separate peace with their recent past as a time of insuperable insanity, and to internalize the hard lessons of the Holocaust. History has its object lessons, and shame should always be a remembered component of the German heritage, but not in the kind of intractable crippling of the national spirit that I witnessed while living there.

An important factor in Hitler’s meteoric rise in popularity was his ability to convince a humiliated and economically devastated post-WWI Germany of the greatness and superiority of the German Volk. Germany is once again faced with its own sense of humiliation and national shame. I remain uneasy at the void of a healthy and vibrant national self-esteem. Germany must rise up from its ashes and become a beacon of hope, tolerance, and inclusiveness. That should be its future legacy. Otherwise, I fear for the German people and the world when the next charismatic revivalist starts stomping the wooden floors of pitched tents, waking the wounded Geist, and countering Germany’s self-loathing with a resounding chorus of Deutschland Über Alles.

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Again, I feel compelled to point out that when talking about what happened in my country (Canada) during the 40's I don't have a huge sense of ownership. I have some, but not a great deal.

For Germans who were not even born when the Holocaust happened, being constantly blamed for it, being required to shoulder the guilt in something they did not have the least thing to do with, must seem like being asked to account for the sins of others. Their fathers, if you will.

Them. Not us.

Because most Germans weren't alive when it happened. And most of those who were were children.

Them.

For these other countries their own sense of victimhood interferes with their own introspection and penance.

I wish this axiomatically put statement really holds. My limited experience implies almost the contrary. This country, the US, has not even attempted to come to grips with what was done to Native Americans. The road to penance is not on the national map.

A son of a holocaust survivor, I observe very limited attempts at introspection. Furthermore, a large part of the European demonization of Israel, i.e. the Palestinian problem, is kind of "you see how bad they are - they deserved it and we shouldn't be blamed."

What might not be clear from the comment excerpt is that I was really talking about Poland, which raises its own questions apart from Germany about how it will deal with its past.

In Germany there at least is the recognition that it was the German state behind the atrocities and that fact shapes how the modern German state and its citizens deal with the past. In countries like Poland, however, which lost its sovereignty for a number of those years, the equation is different. Because the Holocaust was not a national policy, it's not really part of the national ideology to atone for it. Which seems reasonable to the extent that Poland itself was victimized by German aggression too. (It did get wiped off the map as an independent state by Hitler and Stalin.) However, because it is so indignant about what was done to it, I think it may turn a blind eye to the atrocities perpetuated within its borders by Polish people during the period.

What absolutely boggled my mind on my visit was how homogeneous today's Poland is, and just how many people were erased from its land. I visited a small town in the northeast that pre-war had 5000-7000 Jewish people, but despite there being plenty of original architecture left in the town, I couldn't find a single surviving synagogue. How does that happen? And, moreover, why is no one there talking about how it happened? If it weren't for the one cemetery with its trashed gravestones, there would be no record that generations of these people had ever lived there at all. And even if their absence were all the doing of the Nazis, even if the local people were in no way culpable, why is there no significant sign of sadness for losing so many of their neighbors?

To be fair, there was one small memorial in the cemetery. And it should not be underestimated the effect that the Cold War and communist rule had on post-war recovery and healing (even in Germany). In a way I suppose these places were still suffering from the war until much more recently. Maybe it's not fair to say they had 60 years to come to terms with it; maybe on a practical level they've really only had 15.

Anyway, we do run into the problem of imposing external expectations on a nation of people, many of whom were not even born then. It's an important question to consider to what extent it is fair to do so, and to what extent any of these expectations are reasonable. Exactly what could we expect these people to do? They can't turn back the clock and bring these people back, so what would be the next best thing?

And of course, once we (as Americans) ask these questions of people in other countries, as it was pointed out, we also need to be able to ask them of ourselves.

In a related way, I wonder how Poland has internally come to terms with the expulsion of Germans from parts of once-eastern Germany and now-western Poland. My ancestors came from Weigelsdorf (really) in Silesia, which suddenly became Wigancice in about 1946. That town is too small to have web presence, but the larger nearby town of Ziębice (once Münsterberg) has a rather awkward description of its transformation: "After the first Silesian War in 1742 the town was dominated by the Prussians and until 1945 remained under German rule. After the World War II the town together with the entire Klodzko Duchy became Polish." Sounds like magic.

I know that the depopulation of Germans from the area wasn't the Poles' idea, and that Germans did similar things elsewhere earlier. I wonder, though, if Poles in renamed areas actively acknowledge the previous owners of their houses.

I find it very hard, on reading a passage like Gellis's, and some of the comments on it, not to suspect that primitive notions of collective and hereditary guilt still persist under cover of modern verbiage.

Are Poles who hadn't been born when the Nazis occupied their country obliged to engage in some self-lacerating exercise full of "we did this" and "we did that," when in point of fact the "we" in question did nothing of the kind? I think not, and I'll be so bold as to suggest that even present-day Germans are under no such obligation.

Past atrocities, and their perpetrators, should be accurately described. If some of the perpetrators shared your nationality, it's worthwhile to ask what, if anything, persists in your country's institutions or ideology that contributed to the barbarism of the past, and to root it out if it can be rooted out, or to keep a wary eye on it if it cannot. (To the extent that Gellis is complaining of failures to do the aforesaid, she's quite right to do so.) It is not, however, incumbent on you, an non-perpetrator, to "atone." The "nationl guilt" one commenter mentioned is an illusion. Ezekiel knew as much in the sixth century B.C.; I'm not sure we've progressed very far.

As a German born 35 years after the end of WWII, I think it is important to know what happened and why it happened and to make sure it won't happen again. But it is impossible for me to feel any personal guilt on that, not even a "national guilt" - as it was pointed earlier, most Germans today have nothing to do with it and behave democratically.
One problem is:
is kind of "you see how bad they are - they deserved it and we shouldn't be blamed."
Some people actually do so, especially from the Neo-Nazi-Block.
But it must be possible to criticize crimes against humanity from other people without being charged of "you see how bad they are..."
In Third Reich, too many people held their tongue, be they Germans or from other countries. Most Germans learned that it's not okay to accept genocides etc., and now, when criticizing it, they are blamed for it.

2006

Most of us in germany are pacifist. You balme all on us including ww1 (nothing wrong with blaming us for death camps in ww2). You learn of western history books. You are proud of your glorius history.
History is a propaganda instrument since its written/told. Good to hear you visited poland but its not enugh information to try to teach us how to behave.

IMO
Most of you got their knowlege of english ww2 films.