Jews and Germans

[Anonymous]

Interesitng thread. A few select comments:

1. Blame/feelings of revenge/forgiveness

I understand fully if people who have been affected personally by the Holocaust - suffered or lost family members - cannot forgive. This is asking too much. I also understand it for the second generation, whose parents have been affected, as most people identify with their parents and their suffering.

When blame and revenge remain predominant sentiments in the third generation and beyond though, things get difficult. The world needs to be able to move on, even from horrors like the Holocaust.

2. Was the holocaust a genuinely German thing

I would want to think "no" and side with those who say that it is primarily circumstance that makes mass murderers. Germany was humilated by military defeat in WWI, hyperinflation and the great depression, and turned to a charasmatic dictator who turned out to be extraordinaly evil. The task is to prevent situations where people are despearate enough that they would be drawn to charismatic dictators.

But it remains a question why, say, the US turned to FDR rather than a dictator, even though it was as badly affected by the great depression as Germany.

3. Jews and German/Palestinians and Israel

Not sure why a discussion about the first issue almost always turns into a discusson of the second. As if the history of Israel/Palestine would in any way reduce the evil of the holocaust or "put it into perspective". It doesn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is kind of a weird and random post. OP, could you explain a bit about what prompted your post, and where you see your post going?

Fair question, and frankly I'm not quite sure myself. This is of course a relationship burdened by history. I find personalized discussions still tend to be a tad akward or, more likley, just don't take place. So I wonder whether in an anonymous forum one can discuss these issues more openly.

What I'm interested in are issues such as: what's your view of today's Germany? Do you consider Germans generally decent people (but then how do you reconcile this with the holocaust) or not? For Jews with German-Jewish ancestry, do you feel that Germany is part of your family history? Have you been there - and if so what do you think - or not - would you be curious to go and what holds you back?

Full disclosure: I'm German but have lived in the US for a long time. Happy to address questions in the other direction if there is interest.

Btw, I don't want anyone to say anything. If you don't want to comment, don't.

As a Jew, I do not hold today's Germany accountable for the Holocaust. I think today's Germans are no better or worse than any other modern people. My grandmother was also German but I see our family as culturally Jewish. I do not equate our culture with the countries from which my family originated. I have not been there but would like to go some day. Honestly, this is a weird line of questioning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesitng thread. A few select comments:

1. Blame/feelings of revenge/forgiveness

I understand fully if people who have been affected personally by the Holocaust - suffered or lost family members - cannot forgive. This is asking too much. I also understand it for the second generation, whose parents have been affected, as most people identify with their parents and their suffering.

When blame and revenge remain predominant sentiments in the third generation and beyond though, things get difficult. The world needs to be able to move on, even from horrors like the Holocaust.

2. Was the holocaust a genuinely German thing

I would want to think "no" and side with those who say that it is primarily circumstance that makes mass murderers. Germany was humilated by military defeat in WWI, hyperinflation and the great depression, and turned to a charasmatic dictator who turned out to be extraordinaly evil. The task is to prevent situations where people are despearate enough that they would be drawn to charismatic dictators.

But it remains a question why, say, the US turned to FDR rather than a dictator, even though it was as badly affected by the great depression as Germany.

3. Jews and German/Palestinians and Israel

Not sure why a discussion about the first issue almost always turns into a discusson of the second. As if the history of Israel/Palestine would in any way reduce the evil of the holocaust or "put it into perspective". It doesn't.

Wrt your q about FDR, I would say that we were more fortunate in having a longer history with constitutional democracy than the Germans had. Don't forget, it only became a unified country in the 19th century and a republic after World War I. Not enough time for ideals like freedom and democracy to become deeply rooted,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone up thread mentioned that Germans no longer sing "Deutschland uber alles." Das Deutchlandlied is still the German national anthem, as it has been since 1922. While the Nazis used the first stanza of the song as the official anthem and today the official anthem is the third stanza, the song itself was introduced is not a chauvinistic anthem, but a call for unity. Germany, as anyone who has taken a World History course should know, was born out of the various German principalities and states of the Holy Roman Empire, excluding Austria. The lyrics were written in 1841, a few years before the revolutions of 1848, and called for all Germans to unite in a "Germany over others," meaning a unified German state rather than the hodgepodge of principalities that existed until the declaration of the German Empire in 1870.

In Gore Vidal's Lincoln, someone comments that Lincoln did very much for the United States what Bismarck was doing for Germany, creating an "is' from an "are."

The "Deutschlandlied" was never a particularly aggressive nationalist song. "Germany above everything" is followed by "if it sticks together brotherly, for its protection and unity". Romantic, fairly innocent 19th century fantasies. The Nazis had much more aggressive songs, such as the Horst-Wessel-Lied.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Not justifying what they did but thought that most people did not know what the Germans were doing until after the war was over. Then they found out about the real purpose of the concentration camps and the ovens.

Well, no. Many Germans may not have known everything. But if there was a German who didn't know anything, it was only because they willfully refused to know.

The killing camps were not in Germany but in Poland and Ukraine (were much of Europe's Jewish population lived). What happened in these camps became widely known only after WWII. Germans could or even should have noticed the disappearance of Jewish neighbors and colleagues, especially in cities with sizeable Jewish populations. But many Jews also emigrated (forced), and unless one was familiar with their circumstances, it may not always have been clear why someone wasn't there any more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm Jewish and have several friends who are at least part German.

Interesting and strange tidbit-I remember my parents saying the German Jews consider themselves classier and smarter than the Jews from other parts and they sometimes snub other Jews or something like that. There was this ranking of sorts-German Jews considered themselves at the top then Russian Jews, etc then Sephardic from various places. I know, it's inane and senseless. My parents werr of Russian Jewish decent.

There is a brilliant book "the pity of it all" by Amos Elon about the history of the German jewry. Many German jews bought enthusiastically into 19th and early 20th German culture, considered themselves enlightened and superior to the "Ghetto jews" of Eastern Europe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Not justifying what they did but thought that most people did not know what the Germans were doing until after the war was over. Then they found out about the real purpose of the concentration camps and the ovens.

Well, no. Many Germans may not have known everything. But if there was a German who didn't know anything, it was only because they willfully refused to know.

The killing camps were not in Germany but in Poland and Ukraine (were much of Europe's Jewish population lived). What happened in these camps became widely known only after WWII. Germans could or even should have noticed the disappearance of Jewish neighbors and colleagues, especially in cities with sizeable Jewish populations. But many Jews also emigrated (forced), and unless one was familiar with their circumstances, it may not always have been clear why someone wasn't there any more.

I don't have any patience with this argument, really. Most Germans did not know all of the details. But they definitely knew that something bad was going on. People disappeared into the East and never came back. And soldiers came home from the East and told people what was happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

2. Was the holocaust a genuinely German thing

I would want to think "no" and side with those who say that it is primarily circumstance that makes mass murderers. Germany was humilated by military defeat in WWI, hyperinflation and the great depression, and turned to a charasmatic dictator who turned out to be extraordinaly evil. The task is to prevent situations where people are despearate enough that they would be drawn to charismatic dictators.

But it remains a question why, say, the US turned to FDR rather than a dictator, even though it was as badly affected by the great depression as Germany.

3. Jews and German/Palestinians and Israel

Not sure why a discussion about the first issue almost always turns into a discusson of the second. As if the history of Israel/Palestine would in any way reduce the evil of the holocaust or "put it into perspective". It doesn't.

Wrt your q about FDR, I would say that we were more fortunate in having a longer history with constitutional democracy than the Germans had. Don't forget, it only became a unified country in the 19th century and a republic after World War I. Not enough time for ideals like freedom and democracy to become deeply rooted,

Russia was a threat
Germany sent Lenin to Russia to destabilize it. Baltic nations were supposed to be independent, which for Germany meant under German control, but they got their independence despite Germany.
Without Stalin, ww2 would not have happened. The whole thing started as an agreement between Molotov and Rippentropf. Hitler was a simple mouthpiece for the Nazi hierarchy. After all, none of them had any more use for the Kaiser. Britains royals are related to them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Not justifying what they did but thought that most people did not know what the Germans were doing until after the war was over. Then they found out about the real purpose of the concentration camps and the ovens.

Well, no. Many Germans may not have known everything. But if there was a German who didn't know anything, it was only because they willfully refused to know.

The killing camps were not in Germany but in Poland and Ukraine (were much of Europe's Jewish population lived). What happened in these camps became widely known only after WWII. Germans could or even should have noticed the disappearance of Jewish neighbors and colleagues, especially in cities with sizeable Jewish populations. But many Jews also emigrated (forced), and unless one was familiar with their circumstances, it may not always have been clear why someone wasn't there any more.

I don't have any patience with this argument, really. Most Germans did not know all of the details. But they definitely knew that something bad was going on. People disappeared into the East and never came back. And soldiers came home from the East and told people what was happening.

They surely knew "something bad" was going on. There was the Kristallnacht, Jews were removed from government service and liberal professions, Jewish shops closed, Jewish properties were sold off by Nazis, and the former owners were not there no more.

The broad population did not know though that Jews went to killing camps. This was a revelation to the German civilian public as much as to the allied secret services after WWII. German soldiers had little to do with the camps; they were run by the Nazi bureaucracy, not the army.

[Anonymous]

Camps were found at the end of the war, and put to use again by the communists. Some Auschwitz survivors ended in the gulag

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Not justifying what they did but thought that most people did not know what the Germans were doing until after the war was over. Then they found out about the real purpose of the concentration camps and the ovens.

Well, no. Many Germans may not have known everything. But if there was a German who didn't know anything, it was only because they willfully refused to know.

The killing camps were not in Germany but in Poland and Ukraine (were much of Europe's Jewish population lived). What happened in these camps became widely known only after WWII. Germans could or even should have noticed the disappearance of Jewish neighbors and colleagues, especially in cities with sizeable Jewish populations. But many Jews also emigrated (forced), and unless one was familiar with their circumstances, it may not always have been clear why someone wasn't there any more.

Haaaa haaa hhaa blebullshit!

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

Signed the AA poster

[Anonymous]

Hitler was pretty brilliant. If he had gone in and swiftly started to execute Jews then he would have been stopped right away. Instead he started to slowly alienate the Jews and slowly strip away their freedoms.

When people say they don't care of the NSA is listening to their calls, because they have nothing to hide, I always think of Hitler and his tactics. It's the same with more and more cameras going up to watch for crime and traffic. It's the government monitoring our movements. Stores are tracing our shopping habits by tracking our smart phones in their stores. Ever so slowly we are being tracked more and more.

If conditions are right, there's a charismatic enough leader, and the transitions are done slowly, it can happen anywhere.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" George Santayana

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So strange to judge a current population for the sins of their past. I understand that the Holocaust was horrific. But, there are many people now that had no role in that. Germany is also far from the only country who has committed atrocities (we don't have to look much further than the U.S. where we all reside? Do you have the same views about the U.S.?)

One of my very best friends is Jewish. We've talked about this and she won't go to Germany, won't buy German cars, etc. I just think this is odd. One thing to harbor such feelings toward an actual nazi/nazi sympathizer. This is something I just don't get.

But they are still very racist and xenophobic. I don't blame your friend. I swore I would never by a Benz or BMW as a child. And I'm an AA... Of course then I moved to Arlington.

Germans are not more racist and xenophobic than the rest of Europe. You are a bigot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hitler was pretty brilliant. If he had gone in and swiftly started to execute Jews then he would have been stopped right away. Instead he started to slowly alienate the Jews and slowly strip away their freedoms.

When people say they don't care of the NSA is listening to their calls, because they have nothing to hide, I always think of Hitler and his tactics. It's the same with more and more cameras going up to watch for crime and traffic. It's the government monitoring our movements. Stores are tracing our shopping habits by tracking our smart phones in their stores. Ever so slowly we are being tracked more and more.

If conditions are right, there's a charismatic enough leader, and the transitions are done slowly, it can happen anywhere.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" George Santayana

Alienation and limiting freedom is the MO of an abuser. Also, the slow creep into the area of citizens rights is what gun advocates proclaim to be worried about.

[Anonymous]

Are Ford motor vehicles OK?