Bespoke translation by yours truly. Original article [A] by Danisch
A note on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Auschwitz.
I have never been to Auschwitz. I have been to other places, Dachau. But I am planning to drive there at some point whenever it's not some remembrance day and maybe there aren't so many scare tourists turning the place into a horror Disneyland and there are not so many politicians turning it into a grandstanding backdrop.
I have often written on the talk I have with my grandmother, who told me that it's a lie when people claim that they didn't know anything. "After the midway point" - back then, I didn't ask what she meant by it, but together with readers, among them historians who confirmed what my grandmother said, I came to the conclusion that she must have meant the year 1942 - everybody knew what is happening there. Not from media, public broadcasting, the press, they were keeping it under wraps there. But from what you would call "social media" nowadays: There are conscripts in the village who served in concentration camps, and who then told the village hot off the press what they saw there, had to spill their beans, and tried numbing themselves with alcohol.
I don't know what concentration camp she referred to, she did not mention that. But my grandparents lived in Upper Silesia, in Gliwice. My grandmother still spoke fluent Polish. Gliwice is roughly one hour by train away from Auschwitz. If conscripts in a village were able to commute to their place of duty, I guess it must have been Auschwitz.
I have remarked occasionally that I think the Holocaust exhibitions and memorials are misguided, because I think they don't go far enough for the purpose of preventing a repeat of history. They show - with good reasoning - the horror, the cruelty, the murder, and the perpetrators in their symbols, how to recognize them. They grieve. They lament. They warn. But they do not show and explain the methods with which it was possible to get to the point of people murdering like at the assembly line. They show what Nazis look like, how to recognize them, their traits. But they don't show how to turn people into Nazis. And that would be the required knowledge to prevent it from happening again.
[We Germans] are good at memorializing the victims. We name streets after them, put "Stolpersteine" [brass-plated concrete cubes] into the ground, show their belongings as far as they survived the times, play a concert on violins that belonged to Jews. That is good and right. It helps with grieving. But it does not help prevent a repeat. If you want to do that, you have to look at the perpetrators. You need to examine the life of the perpetrators, not the victims.
And that is the problem. Because, if we were to describe the methods, we would notice that the methods haven't stopped, but that we are now living in a tie in which all the methods are being used again - or still - and are being used politically. Also by the SPD and the Greens who are currently doing the "memorial hour victims of national socialism" in the federal parliament, and which is being televised live. Or, in better words, the hypocrisy hour.
It is dishonorable.
Especially the SPD, a run-down ruin of a political party, is marinating in the Holocaust right now, and spreads the stench of death that the party is only doing it because the campaigning season is not going well. It's a show of dead bodies, in which the dead and the still-living are being strong-armed for campaigning, the incinerators are becoming means for an election campaign.
A few years ago, there has been a surprising development. Young Israelis wanted to go to Germany, resettle in Berlin, they thought the city was cool. That is over. Via migration, Germany has been transformed into a place that Jews are now leaving again because they can't walk on the street without danger, can't go to school anymore without getting attacked. Responsible for this are the same parties who love grandstanding "Never again" and who are now pretending to memorialize the Holocaust.
These people do not pass over any opportunity to surf the Holocaust, to instrumentalize the violent rhetoric of murder for their party purposes, for their monetary gain.
It disgusts me.
The Holocaust Milking by the SPD
A note on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Auschwitz.
I have never been to Auschwitz. I have been to other places, Dachau. But I am planning to drive there at some point whenever it's not some remembrance day and maybe there aren't so many scare tourists turning the place into a horror Disneyland and there are not so many politicians turning it into a grandstanding backdrop.
I have often written on the talk I have with my grandmother, who told me that it's a lie when people claim that they didn't know anything. "After the midway point" - back then, I didn't ask what she meant by it, but together with readers, among them historians who confirmed what my grandmother said, I came to the conclusion that she must have meant the year 1942 - everybody knew what is happening there. Not from media, public broadcasting, the press, they were keeping it under wraps there. But from what you would call "social media" nowadays: There are conscripts in the village who served in concentration camps, and who then told the village hot off the press what they saw there, had to spill their beans, and tried numbing themselves with alcohol.
I don't know what concentration camp she referred to, she did not mention that. But my grandparents lived in Upper Silesia, in Gliwice. My grandmother still spoke fluent Polish. Gliwice is roughly one hour by train away from Auschwitz. If conscripts in a village were able to commute to their place of duty, I guess it must have been Auschwitz.
I have remarked occasionally that I think the Holocaust exhibitions and memorials are misguided, because I think they don't go far enough for the purpose of preventing a repeat of history. They show - with good reasoning - the horror, the cruelty, the murder, and the perpetrators in their symbols, how to recognize them. They grieve. They lament. They warn. But they do not show and explain the methods with which it was possible to get to the point of people murdering like at the assembly line. They show what Nazis look like, how to recognize them, their traits. But they don't show how to turn people into Nazis. And that would be the required knowledge to prevent it from happening again.
[We Germans] are good at memorializing the victims. We name streets after them, put "Stolpersteine" [brass-plated concrete cubes] into the ground, show their belongings as far as they survived the times, play a concert on violins that belonged to Jews. That is good and right. It helps with grieving. But it does not help prevent a repeat. If you want to do that, you have to look at the perpetrators. You need to examine the life of the perpetrators, not the victims.
And that is the problem. Because, if we were to describe the methods, we would notice that the methods haven't stopped, but that we are now living in a tie in which all the methods are being used again - or still - and are being used politically. Also by the SPD and the Greens who are currently doing the "memorial hour victims of national socialism" in the federal parliament, and which is being televised live. Or, in better words, the hypocrisy hour.
Did anybody from the federal government actually manage to drive to Auschwitz WITHOUT making a big photo session out of it?
[in case you don't recognize him, that's Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD)]
— Robin Engelhardt (@Elektro_Robin) January 27, 2025
It is dishonorable.
Especially the SPD, a run-down ruin of a political party, is marinating in the Holocaust right now, and spreads the stench of death that the party is only doing it because the campaigning season is not going well. It's a show of dead bodies, in which the dead and the still-living are being strong-armed for campaigning, the incinerators are becoming means for an election campaign.
A few years ago, there has been a surprising development. Young Israelis wanted to go to Germany, resettle in Berlin, they thought the city was cool. That is over. Via migration, Germany has been transformed into a place that Jews are now leaving again because they can't walk on the street without danger, can't go to school anymore without getting attacked. Responsible for this are the same parties who love grandstanding "Never again" and who are now pretending to memorialize the Holocaust.
These people do not pass over any opportunity to surf the Holocaust, to instrumentalize the violent rhetoric of murder for their party purposes, for their monetary gain.
It disgusts me.
