Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - October 6, 1981, Winnipeg, Manitoba 8 will Nipes free october focus West germans scarred by legacy of the holocaust by Hal Piper the Baltimore Sun West Germany helmets helmets off weve the year was 1946 and a Young German writer named Wolfgang Borchert was making one of the Early efforts to come to terms with the enormity of what had twice jailed Dur ing the and once condemned to death for defeat Borchert died in 1947 at the age of his manifesto and other writings by other authors gave birth to the notion of the end of the second world War As year Zero death of the the Ning of the the new measuring the total rupture of nervous breakdown As Borchert described building a into the nothingness was like recovering from a nervous the end of the War was not the deliverance from fascism or the awaken big from a bad it was rather the destruction of and the isolation of the guns and sergeants Bel Low no wrote Bor we shall never March together for now on All March human activity was reduced to a dance Over the to the hectic improvisational music of the Laws of Harmony were swept away ourselves Are too much Good grammar forms and structures Are of no future and in this great icy Soli tude i which our heart almost freezes to death morning comes Only out of Borcherts nihilism Proba Bly explains the postwar Germany of die economic Miracle and Well tended geraniums about As Well As anything but even de Claring year Zero does not sweep under the Rug the history that went the germans were at it again in Early thirty eight years after their eight former guards in a nazi death Camp at last had been judged As War their sentences ranged from three years to life at a thousand dinner Par in a thousand super markets and parking Over thousand tubs of friends and neighbors started the old Dis the criminals got off too said after All these what is the Good of raking Over the said different As a i am unlike other says a woman of about i can never be proud of my another woman about the same age As if it some How exonerated you should remember that Many thousands of those who died in that prison Camp perished from they were not the germans Are forever being accused of trying to forget their sometimes they do As Borchert and their temporary Success produces those alarming news stories we see every two or three reporting that some appalling percent age of High school students do not know who Adolf Hitler worse identify him correctly As the Man who built the first German other germans Are Wallow ing in probing it like an aching the bundestag has before it a Bill to ban the Sale of hitlers Jefe if a civic group is lobbying for a Law that would make it a crime to in speech or that the nazi atrocities of bouncing around in the appellate court of All an Appeal to Clear the name of Marinus Van Der the dutch communist executed after a nazi court found that he had torched the Berlin Reich Stag in the Appeal was granted on grounds that nazi courts were then a Supe rior court overruled the Deci finding the continuity of German Justice interrupted by the year there was no Legal Way to overturn verdicts of the nazi special ghosts and there Tare the each with its special the week be fore the death amp guards were sentenced was the anniversary of hitlers attack on then came the anniversary of the failed at tempt by army officers to assassinate August brought the anniversary of the Berlin Wall 20 and september marked the beginning of the War in Danzig Harbor 42 years there will be Magazine articles and documentary speeches on the floor of the bundestag or Wreath laying to commemorate All of there always every the germans Are forever being accused of trying to forget their past sometimes they do try and their temporary Success produces those alarming news stories we see every two or three reporting that some appalling percentage of High school students do not know who Adolf Hitler worse identify him correctly As the Man who built the first German even when nobody talks about the War is it is in the criminal most Western european countries have abolished capital but Ger mans feel that in their Case there is a special reason for to condemn Crimi nals to death our you the War was in the nazi death amp of but not Only As the subject it also underlay the willingness of the court to go along with the 5 years of delays and procedural Wran gling that dragged out the it was not that the court was a league with the murderers Given the brutality and arbitrariness of nazi the postwar courts Are obsessed with fulfilling every civilized Jot and title of red tape protecting the individual against the the War is present in the awkwardness germans Felt when Israel bombed the iraqi nuclear if it were any country but germans would condemn such an harshly if the political leaders were rely ing on Iraq As an Oil source or mildly if they sympathized with israels Security but because West Germany feels abashed be fore Israel because of events that predated the founding of either state most germans merely turned red and pacifist movement the War is present in the pacifist the churches speak out now be cause they did not speak out in the Hitler politics is too Many Church men to be left to the another pacifist is an older Man who has refused to Dis cuss the Hitler years even with his own they know Only that at 17 he was in the Hitler youth everyone the Man says he trusts Leonid Brezhnev More than Ronald at least Brezhnev whatever their meaning for Czechoslovakia and have kept the peace in for Many Young the War is an undoubted atrocity that unfairly Bur Dens their the Divi Sion of Germany came from the so did the division of Europe and the world into two Power and the arms these Young peo pie know who caused the they read the Maga Zine articles and watch the television but they Are More concerned with what it Means for it is the other East that has had More Success in burying the has done so with a year Zero rationale of its nazism occurred when the German state had a capitalist social and its inhumanity is a distinctively capitalist according to the argument advanced among Robert later a critic of the East German Radical break thus nazism exists not Only in the but in the potential of any German capitalist East Ger is a socialist and this Radical break with the past has the the argument May be a Little less self serving than it because Many East Germany postwar political leaders were Long time communists who had been driven underground by East Germany has in to use the War for its own under soviet briskly convicted War criminals the figure for West Germany is Al though Many More were convicted by Allied tribunals or by in neighbouring it denied any responsibility to pay compensation to victims of nazi crimes West Germany has paid billion to Israel and to individual and will pay another billion be fore the end of the most of East Germany uses the War As a stick to beat West Germany the verdicts against the death amp guards were not merely East Ger Many but persuasive evidence that nazism is again rearing its head in capitalist in there is Little Evi Dence of the Neo nazi political which seemed on the Rise a dozen years now consistently draws less than one percent of the polls turn up percentages of people who hate miss Hitler and blame the War on the but the age group break Down consistently shows that these Are older there terrorist but also left Wing ugly Antisemitic incidents but no More frequently than in the soviet Union and other the question remains whether the trauma that the germans unmistakably still carry is that of fascism it or that of the year their postwar struggle has been to overcome poverty and not authoritarian political Tenden near extinction the two major political parties stand for the modern social welfare state of the left and the Bismarck Ian so Cia welfare state of the the party of individual the free demo teeters on the Brink of parliamentary and the reaction against the course of postwar Ger Many has been away from its not away from its an alter native list standing for nothing in particular except rejection of the existing order took 7 per cent of the vote in West Berlin earlier this in an ironic Echo of Bor the alternate lists find present Day West Ger Many a wasteland of frag spiritually stunted Borchert in the manifesto wrote of the icy Solitude of ruined Ger thirty five years Graffiti appear on the Walls of fat Germany decrying the alte Raatik vists1 name for Arctic Deso the Shadow of Hitler and the holocaust still hangs Over West affecting the Way Many germans think of themselves Holiday resorts give free vacations Montreal Canadian a division of incentive a Canadian sales promotion is offering complimentary vacation packages at seven Holiday resorts in the complimentary certificates Are valid until 1982 and entitle two adults plus two children under twelve accommodations paid in full for three Days and two nights at 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