,,War criminals"
BERLIN With the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation from the Nazis a few months away, representatives of state organisations are seeking to turn 8 May into a day of remembrance for German ,,victims"of the Second World War. The council of a Berlin borough has passed a resolution to this effect, and German politicians are defending it in the teeth of massive protests by foreign diplomats and Jewish organisations. At the same time, parliamentarians belonging to the extreme right-wing National Democrats (NPD) are making radical capital out of revisionist tendencies in German public affairs and describing the Allied bombings of German cities as a ,,bomb holocaust", drawing on popular writings by German historians who are clearly using the same language to describe both the Holocaust and the Allies' conduct of the war, thereby making them equivalent.
German ,,victims"
On 19 January 2005, the council of the Berlin borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf passed a resolution stating that 8 May ,,also stood for the terror and suffering of the population between East Prussia and Berlin, for which responsibility lay with the Red Army". 1)The borough planned an event to commemorate the German ,,victims of war, refugees, expellees, violated women and victims (...) of a pointless war waged by bombs". 2)The former Allies protested against this attempt to make 8 May also a day of remembrance for German ,,victims"and to put the German war dead on an equal footing with the millions of Jews murdered by Germans, and with the other victims of the German reign of terror. Spokesmen for the Russian Embassy in Berlin denounced this attempt at ,,rewriting history". 3)One of them pointed out that ,,the Red Army didn?t come to Germany on its own initiative". 4)
Being bad losers
Not only Jewish organisations but also the Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes/Bund der Antifaschisten [Association of persons persecuted by the Nazis/Union of Antifascists] expressed outrage at the borough's resolution, the Jewish congregation in Berlin pointing out that the Red Army has played a significant part in liberating Germany from Nazi rule. The president of the congregation protested in a letter to the leader of the council: ,,The comparison you make obliges me to come to the conclusion that your councillors do not object to Hitler having started the war, but that they do hold it against him that he lost it, to the consequent detriment of the German people". 5)The Christian Democrats (CDU) and Free Democrats (FDP), whose votes helped to get the resolution adopted, have not yet dissociated themselves from it. A motion to withdraw the document was rejected; instead its validity was re-emphasised. It was also defended by prominent local and regional politicians belonging to the CDU in Berlin. 6)
The avant-garde
The public is currently less aware of what is going on in Berlin politics that of the radical version of the revisionist approach to German history represented by a National Democratic Party (NPD) politician who recently told the provincial parliament of Saxony that the bombings of German cities towards the end of the Second World War, which the Allies regarded as militarily necessary, were in fact a ,,bomb holocaust", then going on to denounce Britain?s former Prime Minister Winston Churchill as a ,,war criminal". 7)The NPD?s youth organisation, the Junge Nationaldemokraten (JN), have notified the authorities of their intention to mark 7 und 8 May by holding demonstrations in central Berlin. Taking as its slogan: ,,The sixty-year lie of liberation? Let?s put a stop to the guilt cult!"the organisation intends to march at the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol of German ,,reunification". The Berlin authorities have not yet acted to ban the event. 8)They did, however, refuse permission for an art display in front of the Reichstag, commemorating the liberation from Nazism. 9)
Bestseller
The NPD may well call forth outrage from the German public and media, but it can use popular works by German academics in defence of its assertions. One NPD member of the Saxon parliament defended his use of the expression ?bomb holocaust? by citing the historian Jörg Friedrich's book ,,Der Brand"( ,,The Fire"), which deals with the Allied air raids. The book, which was published in 2002, dominated German public discussion of the issue and was at or near the top of the bestseller lists for months. 10)Its critics argue that the book treats as equivalent the actions taken by the Allies and the extermination of Jews: ,,When Friedrich describes the flights of bombers as 'Einsatzgruppen' (action groups - a term used in the SS - Trans.), burning air raid shelters as 'crematoria' and the dead as the 'exterminated', that amounts, in terms of the language used, to putting the air raids on the same footing as the Holocaust." 11)
1) Empörung über Gedenkfeier von CDU und FDP am 8. Mai wächst; Berliner Morgenpost 03.02.2005
2) Streit über Berliner Gedenkfeier am 8. Mai; Frankfurter Rundschau 05.02.2005
3) Gedenkfeier zum 8. Mai: Auch jüdische Gemeinde kritisiert BVV; Die Welt 04.02.2005
4) Streit in Berlin über Gedenken an 8. Mai 1945; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 04.02.2005
5) Jüdische Gemeinde ist entsetzt; Berliner Zeitung 04.02.2005
6) Streit über Berliner Gedenkfeier am 8. Mai; Frankfurter Rundschau 05.02.2005. CDU und FDP wollen am 8. Mai an deutsche Opfer erinnern; Berliner Zeitung 01.02.2005. Jüdische Gemeinde ist entsetzt; Berliner Zeitung 04.02.2005
7) NPD-Fraktion im Sächsischen Landtag: Rede des Abgeordneten Jürgen W. Gansel; 8. Sitzung des Sächsischen Landtages am 21.1. 2005; www.npd-fraktion-sachsen.de/fra_dokumente/2005/GanselDresden1302.pdf
8) Kampf gegen die NPD ums Brandenburger Tor; Der Tagesspiegel 05.02.2005
9) Die Versammlungsfreiheit und ihre Grenzen; Frankfurter Rundschau 28.01.2005
10) Friedrich, Jörg: Der Brand - Deutschland im Bombenkrieg; München 2002
11)Auschwitz, beiseite gebombt; Süddeutsche Zeitung 24.01.2005