Johann Banner, who played Sgt. Schultz on Hogan's Heroes was a Jewish Concentration Camp Survivor. That has nothing to do with the post but I thought I'd throw that in.
Seriously now. “Germany and Jews†is always a hot topic for Israeli media, but this week I noticed two long articles that I thought might be interesting to compare and contrast. Let’s start on the left. Shay Fogelman wrote in Haaretz Magazine about a group of German-Jewish ladies (“yekkiotâ€) and the fact that lately Germans really seem to be interested in Israeli Jews with German roots.
“The yekke phenomenon has become very hot in the German media in the last few months,” [German journalist Charlotte] Misselwitz says. “It seems we rediscovered them.” Micha Limor, editor of Yakinton, an Israeli monthly for yekkes, also reports increased attention from the German press in the community. […] Personal letters have also started to reach the [yekkiot] women from all over Germany and Austria. [German-born Jewess Mimi] Frons describes their writers, some of whom remain anonymous, as “good-hearted people from the second generation [after the Holocaust] who read about us in newspapers and felt the need to express an apology or identification.”
Now let’s see what the more right-leaning media has to say about zeh Germans and their relationship with Jews and Israel. An opinion piece in Arutz Sheva by German pro-Israel activist Herbert Eiteneier starts with the words: “Unfortunately, when push comes to shove, one has to consider the official support of Israel by Germany as lip service.†My first thoughts were: C’mon, are you really going to go there? Well, he did. Apparently, Eiteneier really thinks the Fourth Reich is around the corner:
“I wonder how long official Germany will still pay its lip service. Should the left-wing parties be able to form the next federal government, expect a change of course soon. How long the [center right parties] will hold out paying their lip service and letting some honest people make a stand, I can’t say. But the virus is out. And I am convinced it will get out of control sooner or later.â€
Oh shit.
- Are Israelis more tolerant of Islam than the Swiss? - 1/7/2010
- Not your grandma’s couscous - 7/30/2009
- Oy Oy Oy! - 7/22/2009
I don’t think that extremists pose a great danger right now. It’s the center of society where you hear the scariest things from. A lot of Germans seem to be remain halfway stuck between revisionism/revanchism and a post-war guilt trauma. And I doubt that something good could ever come from this.
OK OK, call me a star-struck idealist…. Seriously, though, there are extremists in every country. Let’s give the Germans credit for their efforts to own up to their past and, more significantly for this discussion, craft a system of laws and democratic institutions that make it most unlikely we’ll ever see the likes of, you know, him again. And without a him, there’s no Holocaust.
I didn’t really think so, but some people really say the most outlandish things – and mean them literally.
I doubt he’s being serious.
Tom – what? Are you being serious?
We might’ve been in danger of another Holocaust, had Obama not given that speech in Berlin.
Indeed, the situation’s problematic, with extreme views on all ends of the political sphere. But I’ll agree that the current German government (as well as the recent ones) is a far cry from being on either extremist political end. There still is extremism though. Fortunately, this is one of the few states that will address the threats of extremism wherever it may stem from.