Odd half Sentences that May Not Meet Our Expectations, and the Effects of Unrepentance in Europe after 60 years

Still, this afternoon, more than 3,000 neo-Nazis are expected to march down Unter den Linden, through the heart of the capital, calling for what their National Democratic Party terms ''an end to the cult of guilt that exists because of 60 years of lies. (1) A story is often told of two neighboring farmers who had boundary disputes. One farmer kept moving back the marker of the other farmer, who in turn moved it back to its original spot. After some years, the desperate and greedy farmer killed his neighbor and hid his body in a back pond on his property, weighted down, told people the other farmer had moved, and took over his land sure he would never be found out. Eleven years later, there was a drought, and the pond dried up and the neighbor’s body was found. The Biblical principle is “be sure your sins will find you out”. ON May 7-9 th in most of Europe, celebrations, commemorations and memorial services were held to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust. It follows by a few months memorials and tributes to the Liberation of Auschwitz and subsequent liberations of the Killing and Atrocity Centers of Europe at the end of the War. It coincides with an interesting landmark of the ratification in Germany of the EU Constitution (see Maastritch Treaty and EU Constitution Draft), the banning of the NDP march through the Brandenburg Gates in a neo-nazi celebration of the ideals of the Reich, and the subsequent 'no' to the proposed march around the Holocaust Museum in Berlin: despite the setbacks for the Neo-Nazis, who walked out of a moment of meditation for Holocaust victims in the Bundstag, still thousands of persons from 60 years of modern German history and politics renewed and affirmed the ideals of the Third Reich. One can no longer see a distinct end to the giant, only a period of slumbering and condemnation.

A Waking Reich

A few years ago, and sometimes now, I have been ridiculed for suggesting that the whole thing could 'happen again'. For a brief hiatus, most of the civilized western world condemned Anti-Semitism and the events of the European genocide at least on the surface, and there was a realm of tolerance to be had: however to suggest that any anti-semitism in Europe was erased is a misconception: it took till 1985 in Poland for the first bar Mitzvah to be celebrated, the 1960s showed a renewed struggle in which those Jews in government positions and the Arts were again ousted with the same government-sanctioned rhetoric about Stalinist-Zionists and college campuses in which 30,000 of remaining Polish Jews expatriated around the time of Dubcek, and the past 20 years while seeing a dramatic building campaign of holocaust museums, memorials and tolerance programs has been accompanied by a rise of intense anti-Israel and anti-Semitic demonstrations often ranging in the tens of thousands, and often growing violent. Muslim groups are financially joining hands with European and American Neo-nazi groups in oppositions to their perceived enemy, the Jew. The European Union, which decries surfacely anti-semitism and requires the recognition of Israel as a State, has grown to 25 members and counting, but as was the case with Greece, upon signing the statement, there was a concurrent diversion of funds to pro-Palestinian groups. As if all that were not bad enough a corollary report of the 60 year commemorations were an increase to 9.2% of NDP (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands), the far-right Neo-Nazi party in the Bundestag, tripling the 3% that Hitler started with 10 years before his rise to Chancellor and President. There is also noted dissatisfaction among former Nazi Military members at their inability to celebrate openly WWII victories and a great cold silence at best among many Germans about the events of the holocaust, followed by a group who justify or explain, or ameliorate the events, on whose heels come the outright cries to return to Reich politics and ideals to restore the goals and objectives of Hitler in a new century: one of the main being a New European Order. All these events are coupled by a new Pope (see "the Final Solution to the German Question, this blog) whose role in the Shoah was not rescuer, but Nazi officer, and tens of thousands of professing Nazis and children of Nazis in key roles and positions worldwide. The giant has merely slumbered awhile.

The Effects of "Unrepentance"

Right after the end of the War, if the Church had any positive role at all, it was in a call of the Confessing Church and World Church community to move towards a deep and heart-repentance of the German people for what had been wrought on the Jews, and Europe, the Church and themselves. Niemoller called for an end by choice to joining in the Spirit of 'force and retaliation'.(Stuttgart Confession) But even in 1945 and '46, many in the community dismissed or even despised the thought that Germany had anything to repent of: they reasoned it was a war, and that all sides including Germans had many war dead, and that the Germans if they were to repent at all were not to be alone in the repentance for the devastation of Europe. Still, over the years from '45 to '48, more and more reports and accounts of the ideologically driven genocide of the Jews and vulnerable people of Europe came forefront: not merely war dead which amounted to close to 65 million worldwide, but over 11.5 million in the slaughter of innocents and the Germans were centrally responsible. Many Germans on the domestic scence standing amidst the rubble of Germany and its war crimes trials cried, "We didn't know", but the evidence is ample that they could not have avoided knowing. (see Did the German People Know?). But repentance, did not come, except occasionally in small proportion, a few beautiful and warm words, and a belated partial and small compensation to very elderly survivors. Real repentance, of the Church, Germany and the World, would have required a turn-about: the very meaning of the word, 'repentance' has to do with a complete reversal, but it never came. The result in a dying memory, dying feelings, and a rationalization instead which posits that the philosophies then might eventually work out or become viable. In the US it is often couched in concern for civil liberties, a very worthwhile cause and 'law and order' approaches: both of which have merit unless terribly distorted. Reasons for Anti-semitism have resurfaced: while most are highly identifiable by violent argument and action, many are not couched in Academic and Political Rhetoric finding ways of making Anti-Semitism politically acceptable to those who even consider themselves liberal. Concern for Jewish influence in the Media, Pro-Palestinian Rights, etc all disguise a 'polite' anti-semitism: one cannot argue against Israel the Land and not argue implicitly against the Jews. National Repentance is seldom on the agenda of legislatures for more than a moment: at best it is thrown the bone of commemoration of days: like personal attitudes, repentance is a near impossibility to legislate. Until there is heart repentance and restoration/restitution, the great wounds of a great war will not heal, and the time for that is almost over: a generation and a half have been affected, and those in power have not benefitted in an age of genocide. Hardly 'enlightenment'. The title of this portion refers to 'odd sentences' that may not meet our expectations"---it comes from a priminister's urging to overlook the 'problems' of the EU constitution in the great effort of ratifying a United European State, which while claiming not to, will eradicate eventually national identity. So in addition to massively intensifying Neo-Nazism and Arab terrorism, with leaders and money in power, nuances are to be overlooked in the effort of unity: Unity and a New European Order: the two basic planks of the oncoming Reich administration in 1933. Will the next generation, hardly believing in the events, and without eyewitnesses, be able to see that the Reich also started not in the eyes of the public as psychotic terrorists, but as the hope of a new future, with technology, prosperity, and peace at whatever cost. The Reich was only Hell and the Fuhrer only a demon after the end of that ideology. Will we think ahead? Will the body of the slain rise one day in a moral drought and condemn what seemed like a potent plan, but ended in the destruction of Europe and the hope that mankind was basically good? Elizabeth. K. Best Ph.D --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1''Matthew Schofield,Knight Ridder News Service
2 Hitler's Footsoldiers, Democracy's Builders
3 Germany's Bundestag approves EU constitution
4 German court bans neo-nazis' May 8 march around holocaust memorial www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-07 03:44:02
5 Germans adding own suffering to WWII remembrance
6 German President: We Will Never Forget