In order to have access to an electrical socket, at the central station in Mannheim (Baden-Wuerttemberg), report the participants, the Bahn AG is charging more than 900 Euros. The price set by the Bahn AG for ferrying the exhibition car over a stretch of rail of approx. 100 km is at 5,000 Euros. Private railway companies, in the meantime, are refusing to pull the "Train of Commemoration", because they fear consequences for their business transactions with the Bahn AG in Berlin. The monopoly boycott by the Bahn AG is directly connected to the German mass murders in Europe. The current railway company's predecessor (the German Reichsbahn") was the logistician of the mass murders. To refresh this fact in public memory is "poignant," writes the Daily Mirror in a two-page article in its weekend edition.[1]
Sensitive Subject
The London daily finds it "astonishing" that the Reichsbahn's death trains could roll through cities and villages without the victims being helped. The Reichsbahn's transportation of Nazi victims, including more than 1.5 million children, has long been a "sensitive subject" in Germany. How could "an entire nation" not have known that millions were travelling to their deaths. The Daily Mirror writes that "thousands of other rail employees" kept their jobs after the war, helping to build the new German rail system and "denying any part in the Holocaust."
New Sustenance
The enterprise's marketing strategy is being disturbed by the fact that today's Bahn AG cannot shake off this historical heritage and now the "Train of Commemoration" is repeatedly providing new grounds for European public irritation.[2] With transactions worth billions, the company seeks to acquire the control over all of the European and a large part of the world's logistic systems.[3] It is being supported and directed in this endeavor by Germany's Transportation Ministry in Berlin. The latest examples are the takeovers in Great Britain and cooperation contracts with the Russian state railway. The Bahn AG can expect even greater profits particularly from rail-linked business (in part by sea) with eastern nations. This concerns, among other things, the transport of combat weapons to the Middle Eastern theaters of combat [4] and the upgrading of large harbors in northern Germany to accommodate the roll-on/roll-off traffic to Russian ports on the Baltic Sea. Here the Bahn AG is buying into harbor logisticians and profiting from EU subventions. German economic expansion into the Baltic region is causing the isolation of Polish harbors and - as with the transport of combat weapons to Afghanistan - is having serious consequences. The Bahn AG is feeding new (and warranted) sustenance to the fear of a Teutonic predominance.
Barroom Clichés
Recalling the crimes of the predecessor of today's Bahn AG is bothersome. When historical facts cannot be refuted, they are packed away as artifacts, shielded from public updating - as is the case of the Railroad Museum in Nuremberg (Bavaria) or the Berlin-Grunewald regional train station, on a rusty piece of track in Berlin. German media strongly condemns the historical content of these token sites.[5] Citizens' initiatives in numerous cities have been struggling for years to have modest commemorative plaques installed on the facades of their local train stations, to at least point to the fact that local deportations had taken place, usually without success. Among the by-products of this political defense is the stereotypic allegation, "everything necessary has already been done". On various occasions board chairman Mehdorn gave this excuse to justify refusals to accord public demands: "here at the railroad, we don't need an exhibit, we already have one."[6] The quantitative understanding being expressed here, disputes the cultural dimension of the commemoration - but its limitation is impossible as long as humanity is still guided by the taboo against murder. That the board chairman is fed-up with the theme, corresponds to the cheap barroom clichés about it being high time to "draw the line" on the discussion of the Nazi period.
Maneuver
As reactions to the appeal to protest against the railroad demonstrate, the "unscrupulous" [7] behavior of the railway board is being covered by the Ministry of Transport in Berlin. The ministry maintains a "PP" (Political Planning) section, that shields, to a large extent, the railroad company from public interventions or tactically prepares offensives for its pan-European expansion. Because foreign pressure was brought to bare, over the weekend, in protest of the financial demands on the "Train of Commemoration," the speaker of the ministry in Berlin immediately announced that the company would mercilessly collect the penalty payments for commemorating the Nazi's victims, but donate the money directly to a charity organization.[8] The obvious intention behind the PP section of Berlin's Transportation Ministry seems to be to refute the "enrichment" accusation, albeit without relinquishing the massive boycott maintained against the "Train of Commemoration". The speaker for the presidium of the "Train of Commemoration" citizens' initiative responded to this ministerial maneuver with "we won't pay the Deutsche Bahn a cent."[9]
Youth
The organizers announced that the second stage of the Germany-wide commemoration tour began Monday, January 7, in Hanover and continued via Lehrte, Braunschweig and Bernburg on to Halle. Other stations will be Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar, Apolda and Leipzig. After more than 40,000 visitors during the first leg of the journey, tens-of-thousands more youth are expected, who, onboard the "Train of Commemoration," will inform themselves of the "Reichsbahn's complicity in the murders, as well as of the current boycott of its historical heir.
Please read the Appeal to Protest against the Deutsche Bahn AG and the Ministry of Transportation in Berlin, as well as the January 4, 2008 Press Statement of the "Train of Commemoration" initiative.
