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Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

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Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#51

Post by coldcode »

ihm wrote: post #24

I couldn’t read the whole thing, but as a Jew whose relatives and culture was murdered by the Germans, I found it did not adequately address the reality that many Germans knew about the camps (to say nothing of the progroms and humiliations that preceded them) and that the people who perpetrated the Holocaust were in large part incorporated unreformed into German society after the war. The speech reads > Yet with eve…

Saying that the German people all knew of what was being done is not historical, nor the experience of my family. When my great grandparents were taken from their home in 1943 along with all the other Jews in town (other than my Grandmother who was married to a non-Jew, and my mother) they had no idea where they were being taken. Of course they all died but no one had any idea until after the war was over and even today we can only speculate exactly where. My grandmother later survived a year in a camp, and my mom hid in a basement for year as a child. No one in their small town had any inkling of what was happening inside Germany other than what the propaganda was telling them, although there were people with hidden radios in town, even the Allies did not say anything useful.

To say everyone knew is incorrect; to imagine you could change things if you knew is also wrong. Can we today stop our government from cramming children into cages and then forgetting them? Yet we have modern media and still horrific things are done in our name and we either ignore it or feel helpless to do anything.

History is bad enough without changing it just because we have moved beyond, nor is forgetting its lessons and winding up in the same boat again. Guilt belongs to the guilty not the collective; it's up to the collective to ensure it never happens again and keep the guilty from getting away.

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#52

Post by 082349872349872 »

kazen44 wrote: post #38
burger_moon wrote: post #25

Since we're on the topic of Germany WWII. I read a couple books about Treblinka over the weekend. The atrocities that happened there were sickening. To read about what these people were forced to do there in this death camp is painful. The Germans and Ukrainians who did these horrific acts of murder and torture were unaffected by it, as told by two authors who survived. It leaves me with more questions than answers.…

i don't know where you are from, but the education about the holocaust i received was especially memorable because it went through great detail explaining how the holocaust was different from the millenia of bloodshed and genocide that happened before. (European history is drowned in blood and suppresion sadly). The holocaust is especially horrifying because it turned killing into an abstract process that made apathy…

Speaking of dehumanisation and abstraction, Roberto Begnini's "math problem" scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LhuGKejDq8&t=116 came to mind during March-era discussions of possible Covid responses.

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#53

Post by barking »

ihm wrote: post #24

I couldn’t read the whole thing, but as a Jew whose relatives and culture was murdered by the Germans, I found it did not adequately address the reality that many Germans knew about the camps (to say nothing of the progroms and humiliations that preceded them) and that the people who perpetrated the Holocaust were in large part incorporated unreformed into German society after the war. The speech reads > Yet with eve…

You need to ask what would you have done before condemning the German people. It's easier to believe the "safe" truth even if you have doubts about it than set yourself up for a knock on the door and a trip to a concentration camp as happened to very many Germans, both before and during the war. Most of us are cowards and wouldn't intervene if someone was being mugged on a public street. How much more courage does it take to stand up to a totalitarian regime.

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#54

Post by gspr »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #49
gspr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps we can get to the bottom of this. What are the consequences of being wrong in public on this issue? Someone living in Germany would be better suited to answer this, but, from my limited experience: the same as being wrong on a bunch of other things. Your statements are not considered sacrilegious, they're merely considered wrong and not worth listening to. For good reason, in my opinion. Nuanced debate, lik…

thank you for clarifying. Is it fair to say that it is a faux pas to be hyperbolic around charged issues in public?

> Is it fair to say that it is a faux pas to be hyperbolic around charged issues in public?

I wouldn't call it faux pas per se. Just that you can't be expected to be taken seriously if you are.

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#55

Post by goto11 »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #40
ihm wrote: post #24

I couldn’t read the whole thing, but as a Jew whose relatives and culture was murdered by the Germans, I found it did not adequately address the reality that many Germans knew about the camps (to say nothing of the progroms and humiliations that preceded them) and that the people who perpetrated the Holocaust were in large part incorporated unreformed into German society after the war. The speech reads > Yet with eve…

>It also seems to suggest that the German people couldn’t know what atrocities were being committed, which it was well known what was going on. On this point, as someone whose grandparents lived through the German side of WW2, I am convinced it's allied propaganda used to justify the collective guilt of the German people. I don't doubt it was well known to the Jewish population in America at the time, but any news of…

Why would anyone dismiss it as slander? Eradication of Jews had been the stated goal of the Nazi party from the beginning. Progroms like kristallnacht was used as propaganda for the Nazi party. The Nuremberg laws was a matter of public record.

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#56

Post by magicsmoke »

untog wrote: post #27
realradicalwash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be sure that the passage is not misinterpreted (not saying you do, OP): This was not said to excuse the Germans from the responsibility of facing their history. I can personally be not guilty and yet, by being part of a society that builds on a troubled past, bear the responsibilities that come with that past (responsibility to do better, reparations, making amends, and alike). And in this spirit, Weizaecker…

> This point can imv be applied to many historical failings and their long lasting legacies. Feels particularly resonant at this point in the United States. I've heard the argument before that slavery was abolished long ago, so it's time to move on. Unfortunately to the contrary: the effects are still with us. That doesn't mean us white folks have to assume personal guilt as if we held slaves ourselves, but we should…

To put a more cynical twist on it for those less emotionally inclined, the contradiction between a US that believes in equality between humans and 30% of its population suffering from the legacy of slavery will eventually tear US society apart. It doesn't matter if you don't personally feel guilt or the need to fix this racial inequality, if this issue doesn't get fixed there may not be a US in the future. Responsibility means dealing with the problems of life even if you don't want to and wish it didn't exist before those problems spiral out of control.

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#57

Post by notkaiho »

barking wrote: post #50
notkaiho wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except unlike the British Monarchy, one is not born into the position and cannot expect to gain the position purely by blood. The position itself may be largely ceremonial, but the holder of the post is recognised as an elder statesperson in their own right for their career prior to the presidency.

You can still get duffers in such jobs as often a candidate is put forward who's agreeable all parties and as such can be the lowest common denominator who won't rock the boat.

Term limits, though. :)

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#58

Post by pjc50 »

burger_moon wrote: post #25

Since we're on the topic of Germany WWII. I read a couple books about Treblinka over the weekend. The atrocities that happened there were sickening. To read about what these people were forced to do there in this death camp is painful. The Germans and Ukrainians who did these horrific acts of murder and torture were unaffected by it, as told by two authors who survived. It leaves me with more questions than answers.…

Arendt and the "banality of evil" is the often-quoted exploration of this question; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/hannah...

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#59

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

ihm wrote: post #24

I couldn’t read the whole thing, but as a Jew whose relatives and culture was murdered by the Germans, I found it did not adequately address the reality that many Germans knew about the camps (to say nothing of the progroms and humiliations that preceded them) and that the people who perpetrated the Holocaust were in large part incorporated unreformed into German society after the war. The speech reads > Yet with eve…

Could you cite the claim that the broad German population knew about the extermination camps qua extermination camps before spring 1945?

Of course the average German would have been familiar with the idea of concentration camps, because Germany had begun to put Communists into such camps already in the 1930s and this was well-publicized. But when the Nazi leadership adopted the Final Solution at the Wannsee Conference in early 1942 and concentration camps became extermination camps, Germany was already under heavy wartime press censorship. The people living around the camps would have known that something was up, but the camps were deliberately constructed to be out of sight and out of mind of the bulk of the German population.

This is not to let the German people off the hook. Germans were aware of the 1930s events like Kristallnacht and one can argue that they should have known that apathy in the face of these smaller atrocities would only encourage larger atrocities. But for most of Germany’s population, an awareness of the camps could only have come through this supposition or through rumour and innuendo, and not firm factual knowledge of their existence and operation.

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#60

Post by SuoDuanDao »

goto11 wrote: post #55
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It also seems to suggest that the German people couldn’t know what atrocities were being committed, which it was well known what was going on. On this point, as someone whose grandparents lived through the German side of WW2, I am convinced it's allied propaganda used to justify the collective guilt of the German people. I don't doubt it was well known to the Jewish population in America at the time, but any news of…

Why would anyone dismiss it as slander? Eradication of Jews had been the stated goal of the Nazi party from the beginning. Progroms like kristallnacht was used as propaganda for the Nazi party. The Nuremberg laws was a matter of public record.

Again, that does not ring true given the conversations I've had with people alive at the time. Jewish people were scapegoated for the destruction of the German economy. Not everyone who accepted that narrative would have believed death was a just response. Any competent propagandist would have left the question of what a proper response was open so people would have imagined that what they thought was proper would happen.

The closest modern equivalent I can think of would be Occupy Wall Street. If the leaders of OWS had formed their own political party in the wake of the 2008 bailouts and ridden a wave of public anger into office, they would have probably had the political capital to seize all bankers' assets as stolen goods and hold them to await trial. It would have taken an order of magnitude more political capital to simply start executing them without trial.

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