I'm not Jewish. Nobody in my family died in the Holocaust. For me,
anti-Semitism has always been one of those phenomena that doesn't
really
register on my radar, like tribal genocide in Rwanda, a horrible
thing
that happens to someone else. But I live in a small town outside of
Munich
on a street that until May of 1945 was named Adolf-Hitler-Strasse. I
work
in Munich, a pleasant metropolitan city of a little over a million
inhabitants whose Bavarian charm tends to obscure the fact that this
city
was the birthplace and capital of the Nazi movement. Every day when I
go
to work I pass by the sites of apartments Hitler lived in, extant
buildings in which decisions were made to murder millions of innocent
people, and plazas in which book burnings took place, SS troops
paraded
and people were executed.
The proximity to evil has a way of concentrating one's attention, of
putting a physical reality to the textbook narratives of the horrors
perpetrated by the Germans.
Then the little things start to happen that over a period of time add
up
to something very sinister. I'm on a bus and a high school boy passes
around Grandpa's red leather-bound copy of Mein Kampf to his friends
who
respond by saying "coooool!" He then takes out a VCR tape (produced
in
Switzerland) of "The Great Speeches of Joseph Goebbels." A few weeks
later
I'm at a business meeting with four young highly educated Germans who
are
polite, charming and soft-spoken to say the least. When the subject
matter
changes to a business deal with a man in New York named Rubinstein,
their
nostrils flair, their demeanors attain a threatening mien and one of
them
actually says, and I'm quoting verbatim here: "The problem with
America
is
that the Jews have all the money." They start laughing and another
one
says, "Yeah, all the Jews care about is money."
I found that this type of anti-Semitic reference in my professional
dealings with Germans soon became a leitmotif (to borrow a term made
famous by Richard Wagner, another notorious German anti-Semite). In
my
private meetings with Germans it often happens that they will loosen
up
after a while and reveal personal opinions and political leanings
that
were thought to have ceased to exist in a Berlin bunker on April 30,
1945.
Maybe it's because I have blond hair and my last name is of German
origin
that the Germans feel that I am, or could potentially be, "one of
them."
It shows how much they understand what it means to be an American.
Whatever the reason, the conversations generally have one or more of
these
components:
(1) It was unfortunate that America and Germany fought each other in
World
War II because the real enemy was Russia.
(2) Yes, the Nazis were excessive, but terrible things happen during
wars,
and anyway, the scope of the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated
by
the
American media, which is dominated by Jews.
(3) CNN is controlled by American Jews and is anti-Palestinian. (Yes,
I
know it sounds incredible, but even among the most highly intelligent
Germans, even those with a near-native fluency in English, there is
the
widespread belief that the news network founded by Fidel Castro's
best
friend Ted Turner, who until recently was married to Hanoi Jane
Fonda,
is
a hotbed of pro-Israeli propaganda.)
(4) Almost all Germans were opposed to the Third Reich and nobody in
Germany knew anything about the murder of the Jews, but the Jews
themselves were really responsible for the Holocaust.
(5) Ariel Sharon is worse than Hitler and the Israelis are Nazis.
America supports Israel only because Jews control the American
government
and media.
For the first time in my life, then, I became conscious of
anti-Semitism.
Sure, anti-Semitism exists elsewhere in the world, but nowhere have
the
consequences been as devastating as in Germany. Looking at it as
objectively as possible, 2002 has been a banner year for
anti-Semitism
in
Germany. Synagogues have been firebombed, Jewish cemeteries
desecrated,
the No. 1 best-selling novel, Martin Walser's Death of a Critic, is a
thinly-veiled roman a clef containing a vicious anti-Semitic attack
on
Germany's best-known literary critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki (who is a
survivor of both the Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz); the Free Democrat
Party
has unofficially adopted anti-Semitism as a campaign tactic to
attract
Germany's sizeable Muslim minority; and German revisionist historians
now
are beginning to define German perpetration of World War II and the
Holocaust not as crimes against humanity, but as early battles (with
regrettable but understandable excesses) in the Cold War against
communism.
The situation is so bad that German Jews are advised not to wear
anything in public that would identify them as Jewish because their
safety
cannot be guaranteed. How can this be? Isn't this the "New Germany"
that's
gone 57 years without a Holocaust or even a pogrom, where truth,
justice
and the German way prevail amidst economic wealth, a high standard of
living that is the envy of their European neighbors, and a
constitution
guaranteeing freedom for everyone regardless of race, creed or
national
origin?
What's changed? The answer is: absolutely nothing. My thesis is quite
simple. While Germany no longer has the military power to enforce the
racist ideology of the Nazis and while all extreme manifestations of
Nazism are officially outlawed, the internal conditions -- that is,
the
attitudes, worldview and cultural assumptions - that led to the rise
of
Nazism in Germany are still present because they constitute the basic
components of German identity. Nazism was not an aberration; it was
the
distillation of the German psyche into its essential elements.
External
Nazism may have been utterly defeated in May of 1945; internal
Nazism,
however, remains, and will always remain, a potential threat as long
as
there exists a political and/or cultural entity known as Germany.
Now hold on a second, I hear many people saying. You can't possibly
claim
that Germans are as anti-Semitic today as they were during the years
1933-1945. It is true that Germany today is much different than
during
the
Third Reich. What is different is that due to its total defeat by the
Allies, Germany today is a client state of America and must do its
bidding. That means repression of overt anti-Semitism. It's bad for
business. The other thing that has changed is that, even though
Hitler
lost World War II, he was phenomenally successful in carrying out his
ideological agenda.
Germany, indeed virtually all of Europe, is essentially Judenfrei
(free
of
Jews) today due to the efficiency and zeal of the Germans as they
perpetrated the Holocaust during the Third Reich. In fact, a very
convincing case can be made that Nazism is one of the most successful
political programs of all time. It accomplished more of its goals in
a
shorter amount of time than any other comparable political movement
and
permanently changed the face and political structure of several
continents.
Germany is wealthy, stable, relentlessly bourgeois, and for all
intents
and purposes, free of Jews. Yes, there is a tiny minority of Jews,
mostly
centered in Berlin, and yes, there have been a number of Jews from
the
former Soviet Union who have emigrated to Germany, but most of the
immigrants from Russia are not practicing Jews and do little if
anything
to promote a unique Jewish-German identity. The result of all this is
that
Germans today are able to reap the benefits of Hitler's anti-Semitic
policies while paying lip service to the "need to remember." Young
Fritz
doesn't have to be overtly anti-Semitic today because his
grandfather's
generation did such a bang-up job of the Holocaust. There just aren't
that
many Jews left to hate any more, and besides, the Germans have their
old
buddies, the Arabs, to do their hating for them. You might call the
overwhelming German support for the Palestinians to be a form of
anti-Semitism-by-proxy.
The German government has made cash payments to the State of Israel,
as
well as to individual Jews, to settle claims of murder, torture,
false
imprisonment, slave labor and genocide. Talk to most Germans and
you'll
soon discover that they think that the score has been settled between
Germany and the Jews, that somehow the return of just a portion of
what
the Germans stole from the Jews is fair recompense for the deliberate
murder of millions of people. If you think the Germans are truly
sorry
for
what they did to the Jews, think again. There's never been an
official
"tut mir leid" offered by the Germans to the victims of the Holocaust
and
their descendants because that would admit culpability. Germany has
paid
off all
claims against it without acknowledging responsibility in the same
way
that the Ford Motor Company engages in recalls of automobiles. It's
all
done to avoid liability.
I have previously mentioned that Germans overwhelmingly support the
Palestinians as opposed to the Israelis, and that this overwhelming
support represents a form of anti-Semitism-by-proxy. Germans may
claim
to
be supporting the Palestinians because they think they are an
"oppressed
people," but let's be honest - they are supporting the Palestinians
and
their Arab handlers because the Palestinians and Arabs share the same
ideals as the Nazis. There's a long-standing history of German
co-operation with the Arabs. In 1942 Hitler personally assured the
Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem that as soon as German forces conquered Great
Britain,
the Jews in Palestine (which was then under control of the British
Mandate) would be exterminated.
We should also keep in mind that the Arab terrorists who perpetrated
the
9/11 atrocities did their planning in Germany. There are several
reasons
for this. The first is the well-known bungling and de-centralized
chaos
of
the German federal bureaucracy where literally the "linke" hand
doesn't
know what the "rechte" hand is doing.
The second is that Arab terrorists can count on a substantial number
of
Germans who share their anti-American and anti-Semitic views. The
former
members of the SS and Hitler's praetorian guards, along with their
neo-Nazi supporters, who gather weekly in Munich beer halls, made
Osama
bin Laden an "honorary Aryan" after the 9/11 attack. Mein Kampf is
also
a
best seller in the Arab world, especially in Saudi Arabia, America's
putative "friend."
Indeed, there is very little difference between the anti-Semitic
rantings
of Hitler and those of the so-called "spiritual leaders" of al-Qaeda,
Hamas, and Fatah. The Arabs also owe Hitler and the Germans big time.
Hitler killed off the Jews, and Konrad Adenauer and his "democratic"
descendants replaced them with the Turks. Yes, the Turks aren't
Arabs,
but
they are Muslim, and although Turkey is a member of NATO and has
relations
with Israel, many Turks identify and support their radical Arab
co-religionists. Turkey remains as fragile a democracy as Weimar
Germany
during the 1920s. It wouldn't take much for Turkey to fall into the
dark
side of Muslim extremism. The end result of Muslim immigration into
Germany has been twofold:
(1) It allows the Germans to feign liberalism and being open to
freedom
and diversity; and (2) By replacing the Jews they murdered with
Muslims,
who for the most part are as viciously anti-Semitic as were the
Nazis,
the
Germans have cynically assured that those few Jews who remain in
Germany
will be unable to reassert political power even in a minority role.
A final point I would like to make concerning the reasons for the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Germany is one that many will find at
odds
with the prima-facie evidence, or even appear to stretch the
boundaries
of
common sense. Yet, I ask you to consider carefully my line of
reasoning.
In many respects Germany got away with the Holocaust without paying
much
of a price. Yes, many Germans died as a result of German perpetration
of
World War II and the Holocaust, and yes, there was much physical
destruction in the country, but the situation is like the little boy
who
steals a cookie from the tray when it is cooling on the kitchen
table.
For
his efforts he may have gotten his hand slapped by his mother, but
the
stolen cookie remains eaten nonetheless.
After having committed the worst crimes in the history of humankind,
the
Germans were allowed to regain their sovereignty after only ten
years;
their infrastructure was completely rebuilt thanks to the generosity
of
the American people; and relatively few Germans were brought to trial
for
their monstrous crimes. Even those who were tried and convicted
received
relatively short sentences or had those reduced or commuted in
general
amnesties.
For example, some members of the Einsatzkommandos, those Germans who,
before the construction of the death camps, hunted and murdered Jews
by
the hundreds of thousands, received sentences of as little as five
years
imprisonment. If there were true justice in the world, Germany would
no
longer exist as a separate country, but would have long ago had its
territory divided up and dispersed among the Allies. It was an
unfortunate
historical coincidence that the Cold War began just as Germany was at
last
being brought to task for its many crimes and atrocities extending
back
to
the First World War. The new threat of the Soviet Union took
precedence
over a just settling of accounts with Germany. The tragic result is
that
many of the countries raped and despoiled by Germany, such as the
Czech
Republic and Poland, are just now coming out of decades of economic
decline, while Germany - fat, sassy, arrogant, self-satisfied, and
essentially Judenfrei - has enjoyed four decades of undeserved
economic
prosperity. We can't turn back the clock to redress all of the
historical
wrongs that have been committed by the Germans, but there are a
number
of
things that can be done to assure that Germany can never again be in
a
position to threaten the rest of the civilized world.
First and foremost is the realization that, while not all Germans are
anti-Semitic, there is an anti-Semitic tendency within German culture
that
extends back to the time of Martin Luther. Germans are instinctively
anti-Semitic in the same way that Americans are instinctively freedom
loving. Anti-Semitism has been and unfortunately remains the default
ideology of the German people. All things being equal, Germans will
instinctively support the enemies of the State of Israel. Therefore,
America will need to monitor closely and be ready and politically
willing
to intervene at a moment's notice in German affairs when it appears
that
Germany is back-sliding into anti-Semitism. Additionally, it should
be
a
goal of American foreign policy to oppose and to accelerate the
dismemberment of the European Union. We must not allow German
domination
of the EU to accomplish through parliamentary maneuvering and
brokered
deals what Hitler and the Germans were unable to accomplish during
the Third Reich.
Given Germany's resurgent anti-Semitism (and that of France as well),
a
strong, German-dominated EU that tolerates and even benignly
encourages
anti-Semitism, and is diplomatically allied with the Arab world, is
potentially the greatest threat to Judaism since Nazi Germany and a
major
threat to the United States as well. The enemies of Israel are the
enemies
of the United States. Let all Jews and Americans stand united as we
proclaim never again to both the Holocaust and 9/11.
William E. Grim is a writer who lives in Germany and is a native of
Columbus, Ohio.
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