Does German equal Nazi ???!!!
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: Nazi's and Germany
Last week the President of Germany visited Israel. Visits of high-ranking German officials have always been surrounded by some tension, since the imprint of the Holocaust is still felt very strongly, both amongst the Holocaust survivors and their children.

But that is not the point I am trying to make.
Eight members of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) decided to boycott the speech of the German President in the Knesset, because he would address the parliament in German. They demanded he speak in English, because no German should be heard in the Israeli parliament. One of them said that as the son of Holocaust survivors he could not stand the thought of that language being spoken in the Knesset. He added that he has also never bought German products or visited Germany.
Since their demand was not granted, they decided to stay away from the session.

I too, am a child of Holocaust survivors. I too know that a Holocaust "survivor" is actually a victim, since the horrors he went through maimed him for life. Yet, I think these eight MP's were very wrong in their stand and that the message they spread is even potentially dangerous and I will explain.
Of course the sound of German, especially in a formal speech, still reminds us of the speeches of Hitler, Himmler and their likes. That still hurts.

But we have to remember all the time that the danger that was (and is!) is not the Germans, but Nazism, fascism and racism. Over the centuries the peoples that have partaken in outrageous carnage against the Jews and against other nations have changed. The Romans and the Greeks decimated our people in their homeland and destroyed our temples. The crusaders massacred and destroyed all in their way. The Spanish inquisition liquidated scores. The Germans (and their allies!) continued and "excelled" in their jobs.

Our struggle to prevent such horrors from occurring again and to remind of what happened, should not be directed to a specific people, but to a specific doctrine. Nations can be peaceful and friendly in a certain century and then violent in another. To pinpoint our condemnation on one specific nation, usually the last that confronted us, leads us and the world astray from dealing with the real problem.
Two generations of Germans have been born after the atrocities of Auschwitz. Certainly the products they make today are no more "contaminated" than products of other nations.
However, the racist and fascist thoughts still thrive, and not necessarily mainly in Germany. They are in existence amongst almost all nations.

To boycott German products, the German language and German soil is like saying: "That's the evil, that's contaminated!" and doing so we not only discourage the vast multitude of Germans born after the war and educated with democratic and humanist values, worse still we close our eyes to the lurking dangers of racism and fascism that are amongst all nations, yes, also amongst some Jews here in Israel. And closing our eyes to the fact that some of us (British, French, Dutch, Israelis, Danish etc) can be as potentially evil and dangerous as the Nazi's were, and that many Germans today can be as heroic as the resistance was in WWII, we seriously impair our efforts to curb recurrence and growth of those dangerous doctrines.

My message is: be constantly aware of signs of racism and fascism anywhere you encounter them, amongst your own and amongst other nations, but especially amongst your own. Stand up and speak out against it. Don't ever think these are traits that are inherent to "the others" only. If you do so, you may feel stabbed in the back one day by your own while pointing at "the others". Don't classify the evil as inherent to certain nations, just because at a given time part of that nation did evil. That in itself is a form of racism.
Evil can rise anywhere. Let's stand together, people of all nations who love mankind, and fight evil wherever it raises its ugly head!