Sixty Years Later
MOSCOW/BERLIN/FREIBURG (Own report) - Circles in the German Foreign Ministry (AA) judged statements made by Vladimir Putin concerning the German role in world politics as being "of little help" and "at times embarrassing." Immediately preceding the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II, the Russian president described Germans as being "victims" and, in the gutter press of Berlin, called on Germans not to let themselves be "forced" into "spreading ashes on their heads and perpetual castigation." Putin's remarks fall in line with the revisionist and "drawing the line" trend heard from the government in Berlin. But it could be mistaken also for slogans of the neo-Nazi NPD, which is why there was criticism in the AA. In commemorating May 8, 1945, activities against attempts at eradicating the criminal role of the Germans took place in numerous cities throughout the country. In Berlin, participants of a motorcade congregated in front of the administration building of Europe's largest media corporation ("Hitler's best supplier"). At the Train Station "Zoological Garten" demonstrators demanded that the Deutsche Bahn AG - DB AG (German Railway Corp.) open its halls to allow the exhibition concerning 11,000 children, who had been transported over the German rail network to their deaths. In Freiburg 350 participated in a protest action against the management of the DB AG. The attempt to ban the victims' photos from the halls of the stations "is the current form of amnesia and denial that has characterized the post-war period," as was formulated by one of the speakers.
To the protest demonstration in the "Historisches Kaufhaus" ("Historical Department Store") the initiators invited survivors of a family in Freiburg, who had been successful in fleeing to France, where the Nazis caught up with them. Few returned from the concentration camps. Nine of Abraham family's 10 children were shipped to Auschwitz over the rails of the German Reichsbahn in cattle-cars. The Reichsbahn was paid 4 cents/person/kilometer. The predecessor of the DB AG lined its pockets with payments from the transport of at least 3 million doomed and pocketed for the transport to the extermination camps, at least 120 million Reichsmark. This would amount to approx. 60 million Euro today. As Beate Klarsfeld (Fils et Filles des Deportes Juifs de France) reported that the DB AG claimed financial problems as the reason why the exhibition created in Paris concerning the train transport of more than 11, 000 children cannot be shown in German train stations, the audience responded indignantly. The identity of "the real victim of the real criminal" disappears "in the accommodating abstractions" and is banished from the contemporary, is the formulation used in the speech of the German initiative "11,000 Children".
On Schedule
In spite of the unsettled weather, numerous mini-vans, autos and approx. 50 cyclists drew the attention on Friday, May 6, in downtown Berlin. The organizers had called for a convoy to the scenes of Nazi crimes, the seats of the administrations of Nazi criminals and to the addresses of the Nazi successor enterprises. As the convoy approached the train station "Zoological Gartens", a cordon of police blocked its route, prohibiting the demonstrators from entering the halls of the station. As a result, there was a traffic jam for about a half an hour at the level of the Gedächtniskirche (Memorial Church). Using loudspeakers, the participants reminded passersby of the role played by the Reichsbahn in taking troops to the front, bringing the plundered goods to Germany, as well as being indispensable for the transport of slave labor and those victims doomed for liquidation. "In spite of the need for intensified military transport capacity, the 'Section for Emigration and Evacuation' under the direction of Adolf Eichmann, organized in close cooperation with the Reichsbahn (...) the transport to the death camps" - "on schedule," was explained in one address. The complicity of the Reichsbahn was also mentioned in Weimar, where Sunday May 8, an information stand ("against forgetting") was erected on Theatre Square (Theaterplatz).
Plausible
Even though protests against the DB AG continue and the information has, in the meantime, reached thousands of travelers the rail company's directorate maintains its refusal and prohibits the exhibition in its stations. In a statement, made available to this journal, the German Chancellor's Office sees this interdiction as "plausible."
Paralleling
In the current attempts at "amnesia and denial" the German government is participating in diverse variations. According to the State Cultural Minister, Christina Weiss, May 8, 1945 did not halt Berlin's domination over Europe, but rather halted "an unimaginable self-destruction" of this "shattered continent". 1)Belonging also to this "complexity" is, in the opinion of this Minister, the multifaceted suffering that German soldiers experienced "as war prisoners." Also because of "flight and banishment," May 8, 1945 will, for "many," signify "not the beginning of peace." As Frau Weiss also complained in commemorating the 60th Anniversary of Nazi capitulation, Germans had to overcome "a difficult winter of hunger," (...) "in which the accommodations for the population, at the end of the war, could not be ensured." Together with the victims of the "crimes of the National Socialist and the Soviet regimes" the Germans should "reevaluate their earlier views," according to the minister in paralleling the German mass crimes with their consequences for Europe.
Involved
Even the Russian President, Putin sees "the Germans" as "victims," having to pay the price of the "irresponsibility of their former leading politicians." 2)Accordingly millions of Reichsdeutsche (ethnic Germans) were ideologically "poisoned" and became "involved" in the war, so that on May 8, 1945, they stood before a "personal tragedy." Germans should not "feel defaced" because of this past, and should self-confidently exercise their rights worldwide.
1) Rede der Kulturstaatsministerin Christina Weiss am 27. April 2005 im Deutschen Historischen Museum in Berlin bei der Eröffnung der Ausstellung zum 60. Jahrestag des Kriegsendes
2) Nie wieder Krieg; Bild-Zeitung 07.05.2005
