This document provides summaries of several news stories from Germany: 1) Neo-Nazis and soccer hooligans have formed an "unholy alliance" in Germany, holding violent protests against Salafists that have injured police officers. Security officials have been monitoring the growing ties between these groups. 2) The city of Cottbus, Germany will dedicate its new synagogue in January 2015, the first in the state of Brandenburg in 76 years. The 350-member Jewish community there traces back to the 15th century. 3) Germany's president sparked political controversy by questioning whether the far-left Linke party is fit to lead a state government, given its roots

1. 1
AMERICAN EDITION
November 2014
IN THIS EDITION
AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE – Mix Hooligans and neo-Nazis and eventually you get trouble.
A NEW SCHUL – The first in 76 years.
POLITICAL DISSENSION – A President criticizes another political party. No it’s not
Obama.
A POLITICAL HARBINGER? – Can what happens in a State happen in a nation?
THE FALL OF THE WALL & A PARTICULAR GERMAN JEW – The Michael Brenner
story.
A LITTLE PIECEOF NOVEMBER HISTORY – It’s 1923. A former Chancellor fights anti-
Semitism. Shouldn’t we remember him?
HABERMAS, HISTORY & RELATIVIZATION OF THE HOLOCAUST – Jürgen
Habermas. A thinker you should know more about.
Dear Friends:
With Thanksgiving right around the corner I thought I should get this month’s newsletter
out to you early so that you could digest its contents along with your turkey and stuffing
feast. Enjoy the holiday!
Historically speaking, in the 20th Century, November has been fateful for Germany – not
much of it in a good way. November 9th is a date of particular importance. On that date
in 1918 the German Monarchy fell and so World War I came crashing down in defeat. In
1923 the Hitler Putsch in Munich failed but made “The Leader” a major figure in German
politics. In 1938 the Nazis destroyed synagogues throughout Germany in an anti-
Semitic blaze now known as Kristallnacht. Their luck changed in 1989 when the Berlin
Wall came down setting the table for the uniting of both East and West Germany.
During November, Germany, particularly Chancellor Merkel, has become more
concerned about Russian expansionism in Ukraine. She has stood up to Putin in quite a
heroic way. The New York Times commented on it. Click here to read their piece.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/world/europe/russia-deports-german-polish-diplomats-
retaliation.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

2. 2
American – German relations seem to be peaceful at the moment so let’s get on with
the news so you can get on with your Thanksgiving dinner…
AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE
We know that neo-Nazis are trouble. However when you mix them with Soccer
(Football) Hooligans and a minority (Salafists) you have a prescription for violence and
real trouble.
Spiegel On-Line reported, “Hours after their coup, the rabble rousers were still reveling
in their unexpected success. One hooligan going by the nom de guerre "Bo Ne," happily
posted: "We made it into the news around the entire world. Russia, Turkey, Switzerland,
Spain, France -- first goal achieved!"
It was a view shared by almost everyone in the four closed forums belonging to the
group called Hooligans gegen Salafisten (Hooligans against Salafists). With more than
3,000 members, the network is a loose association of neo-Nazis, nationalists and
football rowdies -- and their posts made it clear that they didn't think they were being
monitored. One regretted not having brought an axe to the demonstration to "destroy all
of Islam." Bo Ne and others, however, were totally satisfied. Germany, he wrote, has
now seen "what it means to deceive a people for 70 years."
And: "Cologne was just the beginning."
The rally took place on the last weekend in October and saw almost 5,000
demonstrators, right-wing extremists and football hooligans march through Cologne,
many of them clearly looking for trouble. Riled up by the right-wing rock band Kategorie
C (which sings lyrics like: "Today they are slitting the throats of sheep and cows,
tomorrow it may be Christian children"), they filled the Cologne city center with their
hate. Tourists and passersby got out of their way.
By the time the march came to an end, 49 police officers had been injured, a police van
had been flipped over and plenty of other property had been damaged. Cologne police
quickly assembled a special investigative unit made up of 36 officers. State prosecutors
say that 32 suspects have now been identified and fully 72 investigations have been
opened.
Almost as soon as the violence in Cologne had come to an end, dates for further
demonstrations elsewhere in Germany began circulating.
The phenomenon is an unexpected one. Thousands of hooligans appear to have left
their football clubs of choice behind in favor of uniting against a common enemy: the
presumed danger of Islam. In addition, they have joined forces with neo-Nazis and other
racists. Nobody, it would seem, thought that such an unholy alliance was possible.
“…..the phenomenon is one that has been developing for some time now. Since

3. February of 2012, security officials have had solid evidence that traditionally adversarial
hooligan groups were establishing ties and drifting to the right-wing fringe.
The example of Dortmund shows that, for an extended period, the phenomenon was not
taken seriously enough. Indeed, right-wing extremist hooligans had even managed to
find jobs within the club's own security service.
There’s more but I think you understand the problem by now. I am not a devotee of the
Salafists by any means. They represent a philosophy that appalls me. However, this
right-wing group of neo-Nazis and hooligans is even more frightening. It so reminds me
of the German groups that were darkening the political scene of the 1920’s and early
1930’s in Germany. Of course, Germany is a different place these days but fright is not
always a logical matter.
3
One thing we Jews should remember. No matter which minority group is being focused
on, even if we don’t like them, when there’s discrimination and violence. – We’re next!
If you want to read the entire article click here:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-right-wing-alliance-of-neo-nazis-and-hooligans-
appears-in-germany-a-1000953.html
A NEW SCHUL
It’s a nice story. When a German city has not had a synagogue for the last 76 years and
finally, not only establishes one, but has enough Jews to make a real Jewish
community, that’s something to celebrate.
JTA reported, “A former church in the German city of Cottbus is to become Germany’s
newest synagogue, and the first since 1938 in the state of Brandenburg.
In ceremonies on Nov. 2, Ulrike Menzel, who has led the Evangelical parish in Cottbus
since 2009, handed a key for the Schlolsskirche, or “castle church,” to the Jewish
Association of the State of Brandenburg.
The actual dedication of the synagogue is planned for Holocaust Remembrance Day,
on Jan. 27, 2015.
Last weekend’s event comes almost exactly 76 years after the “Night of Broken Glass,”
a Germany-wide pogrom in which Jewish property and synagogues – including the one
in Cottbus – were destroyed.
Cottbus traces the first mention of Jewish residents to 1448. Its first Jewish house of
prayer was established in 1811 in the inner courtyard of a cloth maker. At the time,
there were 17 Jews in Cottbus. In 1902, a larger synagogue was dedicated. Nazi
hooligans stormed it and set it afire on the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938. A department store
stands on the site today.

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The Jewish community was not formally reestablished in Cottbus until 1998.Today, it
has some 350 members, all of them Jews from the former Soviet Union. The current
president is Gennadi Kuschnir.
“It’s wonderful to see this house of worship returned to its intended use,” Menzel said at
Sunday’s ceremony, according to the Nordkurier online newspaper. For decades, the
building has been used for social and communal events.
According to a statement on the community’s website, the State of Brandenburg
contributed the full purchase cost for the decommissioned church, $730,700, and will
contribute about $62,400 per year for maintenance. The city of Cottbus oversaw the
removal of the cross and church bell from the steeple. All other costs of renovation were
to be borne by the state Jewish association.
The Cottbus Jewish community has pledged to use the structure as a synagogue for at
least 25 years.
Let’s hope that in 25 years the community is ready for a bigger edifice.
Like I said, “Nice story”.
POLITICAL DISSENSION
Do you think we have political dissension in the U.S.? What would happen here if the
second most important politician declared that one of the political parties was not
competent to head a legislature after it was elected to perform that duty? Well, it
happened in Germany.
According to the Local.de, “Germany's president sparked a heated debate on Monday
after questioning whether the country's far-left party, Die Linke, is fit to lead its first state
government since the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago.
Joachim Gauck - a former dissident Lutheran pastor in the East, and now reunified
Germany's head of state - had asked whether the Linke had truly shaken off its
repressive communist roots.
He spoke on Sunday as the Linke's leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, Bodo
Ramelow, looked set to head a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD)
and Greens.
Gauck, 74, said in an interview that "people of my age who lived through the GDR
(German Democratic Republic) find it quite hard to accept this", adding: "But we are a
democracy."
The anti-capitalist and pacifist Linke, Germany's biggest opposition party, was formed
as a successor to East Germany's ruling Marxist-Leninists, the Socialist Unity Party
(SED), together with far-left members from the former West.

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Gauck - Germany's largely ceremonial head of state, who is supposed to stay clear of
party politics - asked whether the Linke had "really distanced itself from the ideas the
SED once had about repression of people... so that we can fully trust it".
A national co-leader of the Linke, Katja Kipping, charged that wading into party politics
was "unbecoming" of a president, saying he "must consider his words very carefully".
Ramelow, a trade unionist who grew up in the West, voiced irritation about Gauck's
comments and pointed out that he was a fellow Christian.
The Greens' leader Simone Peter told Monday's Die Welt newspaper that, despite his
personal history in the East, Gauck "as president must act politically neutral".
The controversy comes as Germany prepares to mark 25 years since the fall of the
Berlin Wall on Sunday with celebrations in the capital.
The so-called "red-red-green" coalition shaping up in Thuringia in talks following
September elections would be Germany's first where the far-left would be the senior
partner.
For conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also grew up in the East, it could pose
a headache as it would involve the SPD, her governing partners at the national level,
and could foreshadow a broad leftist front running against her in future national
elections.
SPD secretary general Yasmin Fahimi called for "calm" in the debate, telling Bild daily
that "25 years since the fall of the Wall, it's time to accept the Linke as a party that can
assume government responsibility at the state level".
Bild defended Gauck, saying in an editorial that "he doesn't have to please everyone all
the time. He can say what he wants. In fact, sometimes he must."
The important point here, of course, is the fact that the animosity that many in Germany,
especially some that were citizens of East Germany, have toward the former German
Democratic Republic and its politics is very much alive even today.
A POLITICAL HARBINGER?
In spite of what Pres. Gauck had to say, it looks as if it’s going to happen. Continue
reading…
The national elections in Germany are more than two years away. Today we have a
“grand coalition” with a Christian Democratic (CDU) Chancellor and a Social Democrat
(SPD) Foreign Minister. The two major parties had to join together because neither
could forge a coalition with enough Bundestag seats to take control. The SPD, the more

6. liberal of the two parties could have obtained a coalitional majority if it was willing to join
up with Die Linke, which contains parts of the old East German communist party. Since
winning usually trumps ideological positions, that might be changing.
Earlier this month DW reported, “Two months after state elections in the eastern state of
Thuringia, and 25 years after the wall came down between East and West Berlin, an
announcement came out Wednesday that one of Germany's 16 federal states will be
governed by a Socialist politician.
6
Bodo Ramelow, state premier candidate for Thuringia's Left Party, said via Twitter that
coalition talks with the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Green Party had been
concluded and plans for the Left, SPD Green coalition were set. This is known in
German political parlance as a Red-Red-Green coalition, due the parties' respective
colors.
First of its kind
This coalition is unprecedented; not only, however, because it has never existed in this
form federally, or in one of Germany's states before. There also has never been a
politician from the Left Party, the remains of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) that
governed Communist East Germany untouched for four decades, at the head of a
German state government.
Although the Left Party traditionally fares well in the former east of the country and has
already regularly participated in regional government there, the prospect of one of their
members being appointed regional state premier for the first time has fuelled heated
debate across Germany.
This past weekend, when the entire country was celebrating the 25th anniversary of the
Fall of the Berlin Wall, around 4,000 people rallied in Erfurt, the regional state capital of
Thuringia, to protest against the party. A number of conservative politicians from
Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, including the chancellor herself, have also
expressed their misgivings about the coalition experiment.
In Thuringia, the Christian Democrats have made up a part of the ruling coalition ever
since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The CDU was the highest vote-getter in September's
state election, but they weren't able to ally with the SPD this time around to stay in
power. During the coalition talks, the outgoing CDU state premier Christine
Lieberknecht implored her prospective colleagues not to make a "grave error" by joining
with the Left party, citing the "bitter historical message" such a move would send.
While this new coalition will not be formally installed until early December, it certainly
looks like it will come to power. The fact that a member of Die Linke will be the Minister
President won’t have a major impact on any current German national policy. The
question of what will happen nationally in 2017 when the next election is to be held is
quite another story. Adding Die Linke to a left-leaning national coalition might very well
have implications for all sorts of policies including those in which this newsletter has
great interest. It will certainly be something for us to keep watch closely.

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THE FALL OF THE WALL & A PARTICULAR GERMAN JEW
Earlier this month Germany celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
As the concrete began to fall, it presaged the decline and eventual implosion of
communism all throughout Europe. The Soviet Union was swept into the dustbin of
history. (A troublesome Russia emerged but that is another story).
On Nov. 9, 1989 there were about 3,000 Jews in all of the two Germanys.. The collapse
of communism brought another 200,000.
How about the Jews who were already living in Germany especially the youngsters who
were born there and had not left for Israel or the West? One of those was Michael
Brenner, now Dr. Michael Brenner of both the University of Munich and American
University in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Brenner shared his own story in The Forward. You will find it in complete form
below:
The French writer François Mauriac is quoted with the sentence, “I love Germany so
much that I am glad that there are two of them.” This was pretty much the attitude
among the Jewish community in Germany, in which I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s.
The Jews of postwar Germany felt protected by what many considered a holy trinity: the
bad conscience of the Germans, the presence of the Allied troops and the wall that
made sure Germany would never again become a superpower and a threat to the
world.
There were only 30,000 Jews to the west of the wall. Most of them were Holocaust
survivors from Eastern Europe who had come as displaced persons and somehow
missed the boat to Israel or to the United States in the later 1940s. They had settled
there, but they were not settled. Many lived with their proverbial packed bags and sent
their children to Israel, the United States or England. In East Germany, only a few
hundred Jews were left in small Jewish communities, as most had fled to the West in
the winter of 1952–53 as a result of the anti-Semitic atmosphere under late Stalinism.
I was in graduate school at Columbia University and had just come from a class on
German Jewish history when my mother called from Germany with the news about the
fall of the wall on November 9, 1989. After having survived the Holocaust, she was
among the German Jews who had fled to West Germany from East Germany in 1953,
and although she was reserved about the news, she could now visit her hometown of
Dresden again.
Like most other German Jews, I thought: Was there really no other day they could have
brought down the wall besides the anniversary of Kristallnacht? Which by the way also
happened to be the day when the first German Republic was declared in 1918, and

8. 8
when Hitler failed in his Munich beer hall putsch in 1923. Add to it now the fall of the
wall!
In Europe, no one knew what a future Germany would look like. Margaret Thatcher
feared it just as much as the German Jews did. The writer Günter Grass and other left-wing
intellectuals thought that two democratic Germanys would be better than one. But
in the end there was no other option but unification. On October 3, 1990, East Germany
was swallowed by its bigger, more democratic and more prosperous Western brother.
While German Jews were still worried, they suddenly realized that the fall of the wall
was their lifesaver. With the breakdown of communism and ultimately the Soviet Union,
Soviet Jews were free to leave. More than 1 million left for Israel, others for the United
States. But some wanted to stay in Europe, and over the course of the next two
decades almost 200,000 opted for Germany. After all, Germany was the only country
besides Israel that could not say no to Jews knocking at its doors.
For the small Jewish community of Weiden in Bavaria, where I grew up, this meant
survival. By 1989, there were barely 30, mostly older, people left in the Jewish
community, and they had just planned to merge with another small community about 20
miles away. There was no merger, and within a few years the Weiden community
counted more than 300 Russian Jews. For the first time in decades, the community
employed a rabbi and held regular Sabbath services. Bigger Jewish communities had
similar stories to tell. Some grew to 2000 members from 80. Cities like Munich,
Düsseldorf and Hannover count as many or even more Jews today than before 1933. In
East Germany, where by 1989 a total of 350 Jews were registered in a few cities, many
new and all-Russian Jewish communities were established.
During the past 25 years, Germany has been the fastest-growing Jewish community
outside of Israel. Dozens of synagogues, community centers and schools were built;
Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbinical seminaries have been established;
Jewish museums, bookstores and university programs in Jewish studies continue to
flourish. In recent years, more than 20,000 young Israelis, who settled in Berlin and
developed their own cultural platforms in Hebrew, joined the Russian Jewish
immigrants. They would not have come to a divided city.
While no one could have predicted this revival of Jewish life, one should still remain
realistic with regard to the future. Most of the Russian Jews came without any significant
connection to Judaism and were so busy with integrating into German society that little
energy was left for participation in Jewish life. Many small Jewish communities are
struggling again to form a minyan for Sabbath services and enough resources for their
cultural programs. In addition, recent debates about both the right of circumcision and
Israel’s wars brought to the surface the previously subcutaneous anti -Semitism, which
had never fully disappeared.
With a distance of 25 years, German Jews today mostly embrace the fall of the wall.
After all, it erased an authoritarian state that refused to take responsibility for Nazi
crimes and to establish ties with the State of Israel. And, as an ultimate irony of history,

9. 9
the same day that marked the beginning of the destruction of German Jewry 51 years
earlier now initiated its revival.
There is very little I can add. Michael gives many talks throughout the U.S. If you get the
chance to catch one – do it! He is really an outstanding young man.
A LITTLE PIECEOF NOVEMBER HISTORY
No! It’s not the fall of the Berlin Wall or the commemoration of Kristallnacht. However, in
perusing the Internet, which I do every once in a while, I came across a historical piece
that grabbed my interest. Recently on Nov. 12, 2014 the JTA Archive reprinted a piece
from Nov.12, 1923.
Ninety-one years ago it reported, “An appeal signed by ex-Chancellor Fehrenbach, ex-
Ministers Gottheim, Fischer and Suedakun and others representing the Association for
the Combatting of Anti-Semitism in the Reich deplores the recent pogrom in Berlin
whereby the “blackest page in German history” was written. “The despairing masses
misled by the conscienceless anti-Semite Hitler attacked our Jewish fellow-citizens,
looted Jewish shops, thus writing down the “blackest page in German history”, says the
appeal. “To continue further on this road would mean that Germany is lost. German
honor and its future make it imperative for us to combat the blind Jewish agitation which
is besmirching the German name.”
I must admit that while I know a little bit about German history my knowledge base
about the Weimar years between the end of World War I and the 1933 ascension to the
Chancellorship by Hitler is very weak. Frankly, I had never heard of Chancellor
Fehrenbach. To have a Chancellor of that time, even a former Chancellor, come out so
strongly against anti-Semitism came as a little bit of a surprise to me so I decided to see
what I could find about him. I actually found quite a bit.
Wikipedia reported, “Constantin Fehrenbach (11 January 1852 – 26 March 1926), was a
German Catholic politician who was one of the major leaders of the Centre Party or
Zentrum. He served as President of the Reichstag in 1918, and then as President of the
Weimar National Assembly from 1919 to 1920. In June 1920, Fehrenbach became
Chancellor of Germany. He resigned in May 1921 over the issue of war reparation
payments to the Allies. Fehrenbach headed the Center Party's Reichstag fraction from
1923 until his death in 1926.
After the German Revolution of 1918-19, Fehrenbach … became president of the
parliament, the Weimar National Assembly in February 1919. In that office, he
succeeded due to a talent for achieving compromise and a quiet and self-controlled
nature. Within the Zentrum, he was a member of the party's right wing.
In June 1920, Fehrenbach formed the first Weimar Republic cabinet without
participation of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The SPD remained the
largest party in the newly elected Reichstag, which succeeded the National Assembly.

10. As Chancellor, Fehrenbach represented Germany at the Spa conference (1920) and the
London Conference (1921) He tried in vain to get the US government to work as a
mediator In social policy, unemployment benefits were improved during Fehrenbach's
time as chancellor, with the maximum benefit for single males over the age of 21 were
increased in November 1920 from 7 to 10 marks.
He resigned in May 1921, as the DVP had withdrawn its support for the government's
foreign policy of trying to cooperate with the Allies on the issue of reparations. In
particular, Fehrenbach had failed to get the Reichstag's approval for a fixing of German
reparation payments at 132 billion gold mark. Although he officially resigned on 4 May,
he remained in charge of the care-taker government until his replacement by Joseph
Wirth on 10 May.
In 1922, Fehrenbach became a judge on the Staatsgerichtshof, the legal guardian of the
Weimar Constitution. In late 1923, Fehrenbach was elected head of the Zentrum
fraction in the Reichstag. He remained in that office until his death in 1926. He also
became vice-chairman of the Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus an organization
fighting anti-Semitism. [Defense Against Anti-Semitism in Germany].
This organization was founded in the late 19th Century and continued on until the end of
the Weimar Republic. My guess is that most of its members became prominent on the
lists of the Gestapo. Fortunately perhaps for ex-Chancellor Fehrenbach he passed
away in 1926 and did not live to see what happened in Germany under Hitler’s 12 year
reign.
10
There is, of course, a considerable amount of literature on anti-Semitism during the
Weimar Republic and earlier, however, much of it is in German. I feel it is under-reported
on in English. I believe that many Germans such as Fehrenbach deserve more
recognition and ought not to be lost in the obscurity of history.
HABERMAS, HISTORY & RELATIVIZATION OF THE HOLOCAUST
I came across an interesting article in Tablet a journal of Jewish thought written by
Jürgen Habermas, one of the most influential contemporary philosophers who
(according to Tablet) has published widely on topics ranging from communication and
knowledge to social political theory and aesthetics.
While I was familiar with his name, I did not know much about him. I searched Wikipedia
and found that he is a sociologist and philosopher and that, “Global polls consistently
find that Habermas is widely recognized as one of the world's leading intellectuals.
Reading more about him, Wikipedia noted, “Habermas is famous as a public intellectual
as well as a scholar; most notably, in the 1980s he used the popular press to attack [a
number of German historians] for "apologistic" history writing in regard to the Nazi era,
and for seeking to "close Germany's opening to the West" that in Habermas's view had
existed since 1945. He argued that they had tried to detach Nazi rule and the Holocaust

11. from the mainstream of German history, explain away Nazism as a reaction to
Bolshevism, and partially rehabilitate the reputation of the Wehrmacht (German Army)
during World War II.
11
The battle over what I call the “koshering” of German history during World War II
continues today. The Jerusalem Post reported, “Germany’s ambassador to the
Netherlands is slated to attend a commemoration at a cemetery where many SS
soldiers are buried.
Amb. Franz Josef Kremp is supposed to attend the commemoration on Nov. 16 at the
Ysselsteyn cemetery near Eindhoven in the eastern Netherlands, a cemetery for victims
of World War II. He is, according to a report Wednesday by the Dutch De Telegraaf
daily, aware that it contains the remains of SS soldiers.
The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, the Jewish community’s
watchdog on anti-Semitism, has criticized this practice, warning it blurs the line between
victim and perpetrator.
"At a time when anti-Semitism is at a record level across Europe, and when German
Chancellor Merkel has publicly committed Germany to take a leadership role in
combating anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, it is simply unacceptable that the
German ambassador should bow his head in respect to 3,000 members of the Waffen
SS,” the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s associate dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper and chief
Nazi hunter Dr. Efraim Zuroff said in a statement urging Kremp to refrain from
participation in the ceremony.
The cemetery has “been the site of recent neo-Nazi demonstrations where young bigots
carried swastika flags and paraded with the black banners of the SS,” the pair noted.
“German official policy is crystal clear on the horrors of the Nazi regime, and we are
shocked by reports that the ambassador would consider blurring it,” Anti -Defamation
League head Abraham Foxman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
“German officials should not memorialize those who fought for the Nazi regime.”
Such participation gives the impression that such memorialization is condoned by
German authorities, European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor told the Post.
“This sends a very worryingly confusing message which blurs the line between victims
and perpetrators. Especially as holocaust revision is gaining ground in some circles, we
expect the German government to instruct the ambassador not to attend such an
event.”
At the same time, The Jerusalem Post reported, “Germany's foreign minister said at an
international conference on anti-Semitism on Thursday that "hatred of Jews" was on the
rise once more in his country and across Europe, fueled by spiraling violence in the

12. 12
Middle East.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Germany's Jews were subjected to threats and attacks at
pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza
must not be used as justification for an anti-Semitic behavior.
As well as slogans like "Gas the Jews!" during some marches, in July at the height of
the 50-day Gaza war petrol bombs were thrown at a synagogue in Wuppertal which had
been burnt down on Kristallnacht - a Nazi attack on the Jews in 1938 - and rebuilt.
"Bold and brutal anti-Semitism has shown its ugly face again," Steinmeier told an
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) event.
Perhaps in some minds the issue of anti-Semitism today and the “honoring” of dead
Waffen SS soldiers are different issues and should not be connected.. One must suffer
from historic amnesia if they do not see the connection. It doesn’t surprise me that neo-
Nazis and other extremists have a warm place in their hearts for the SS. However,
when a German Ambassador crosses the line that is hard to take. Perhaps,
Ambassador Kremp will have a change of heart or get the word from the Foreign
Minister (his boss). If so, I’ll report on that below. The point here is that there will be
continued attempts to re-write history and explain away the Holocaust. They won’t
succeed.
A personal note. I feel sorry for the families of anyone killed in a war. If family members
want to grieve that is all well and good and understandable. However, when a
government makes a statement by taking an action that is decidedly a different story.
****************************************************************************************************
See you again in December
DuBow Digest is written and published by Eugene DuBow who can be reached at
dubowdigest@optonline.net
Both the American and Germany editions are posted at www.dubowdigest.typepad.com