For a long time I underestimated the extent of rightwing extremism in Germany. I was born after the Berlin Wall came down. But when I moved to the east, I started thinking more deeply about my western upbringing.
I also tried to dispel my prejudices and started thinking more critically about how Germany handled reunification. I want to stand up against discrimination everywhere and at any time, but in these small towns that can be hard, and exhausting.
When the far right Pegida movement suddenly appeared , with crowds of up to 20, people marching through Dresden chanting Islamophobic and racist slogans, there was an initial sense of shock among the public. Pegida held similar rallies in many other cities and they were largely met with a degree of complacency.
Pegida was given yet another boost. Asylum law was tightened. Refugees were greeted in Munich with tea and biscuits. People began to take action against discrimination. Read: Teaching the Holocaust in Germany as a resurgent far right questions it.
I arrived in Berlin in as a Fulbright fellow finishing a dissertation on Immanuel Kant. Still the Holocaust was inescapable. The 50th anniversary of the Nazi takeover was the following year, and, in preparation, thousands of Berliners were seeking ways to come to terms with what had happened. There were historical exhibits, theater and art productions, and no end of books and discussion.
The projects were occasionally funded, but never organized, by the government. All were created by citizens revolted by the actions of their parents and teachers, and determined to expose the truth about them. Collective Responsibility? Having begun my life as a white girl in a South racked by the civil-rights movement, I am likely to end it as a Jewish woman in Berlin.
I have spent much of the intervening years watching Germany come to terms with its history. Not everyone seeking to preserve symbols of the Confederacy is a Nazi. For monuments are neither just about heritage or just about hate.
They are values made visible. They embody the ideas we choose to lift up, in the hopes of reminding ourselves and our children that those ideas have been embodied by brave men and women. Germany has no monuments that celebrate the Wehrmacht.
By choosing to remember what its soldiers once did, it has made a choice about the values it wants to reject. Other choices, like glass walls in government buildings, from the Reichstag dome on down, reflect the values it wants to maintain: Democracy should be transparent.
When the Berlin Wall came down, it left behind prime real estate in the heart of the city. Instead of selling it to one of the many bidders, Parliament decided to dedicate 4. The rebuilding of Berlin—a long, sometimes maddeningly discursive process, in which historians, politicians, and citizens debated for more than a decade—was aspirational.
No one, least of all a German, would claim that the renaming and rebuilding of public spaces eradicated the roots of racism. The city was not rebuilt to reflect what is, but what ought to be. The struggle itself is good news. Taxpayers Bankrolled General Electric. Oskar Groening, defendant and former Nazi SS officer dubbed the "bookkeeper of Auschwitz", sits in the courtroom during his trial in Lueneburg, Germany, July 15, By Katy Osborn. Related Stories.
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