← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Wayland
Thread ID: 9318 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2003-08-27
2003-08-27 00:54 | User Profile
I came across this discussion on the IMDB message board for the movie "The Pianist" and it seemed relevant to some of the topics posted here at OD. There was something about the comments from the young German that just struck me as almost surreal. It's hard to imagine what it must be like having to put up with the daily pounding-in of this massive guilt trip...
**Luckie_Starr: Does anyone know how this film was recieved in Germany? Or any other Holocaust film, like Schindler's List for that matter? I have known several German exchange students, and my friend's sister currently lives in Germany, and from what I hear World War II is not discussed in Germany nearly as much as it is here.
Kangaroo2000: WW2 not discussed here? I am sorry.. but you are wrong... I am from Germany and I have been fed with Holocaust images and "you are guilty" paroles since Kindergarten. I was 6 when we first visited an old Labor Camp (since there aren't any Concentration Camps in Germany the usual school-trip went to Labor Camps). There hasn't been a school year in which we didn't either go to such a camp, or visited a special fair dealing with the Holocaust, or didn't hear special lectures by Holocaust Survivors. There hasn't been a school year, in which the Holocaust topic hasn't been touched in SOME WAY (either in history, or in German litrature (reading books about that topic) or in Religion). While my mother's generation took this all in, I can see (and somehow understand) a growing displeadness in my generation (I was born 1980) with this education. Yes we are very aware of what our countrymen did more than half a century ago, yes it is our task to prevent anything like this to happen in the future, yes I feel very much ashamed about having such a history (even if it was only 12 years in a history containing 2000 years) but NO I don't feel guilty or responsible for things not even my grandparents committed. I feel responsible for not letting it happen again, but I dont feel responsible for actions that took place 40 years before I was born. I am sorry.. but thats EXACTLY what they try to tell us. Once when we visited a working camp, we had a Jewish guide, who talked to us like: "And here YOU brought the Jewish folks to the working mines, here YOU did this and that, here YOU..." he didn't say "the Nazis" or "the Germans" or "your people 50 years ago" Everyone grands Germany a past, nobody grands us a future.
About the movies and to finally answer your question (sorry sometimes I get carried away) ;-) : I wasn't in Germany when the Pianist aired, so I can't say anything about the Pianist, but I know that Schindler's List was very popular here. Of course it became a "must" for school classes to go and see the movie in the cinemas. And when a class didn't go it was like "is that teacher a Neo-Nazi, or why doesn't he go with his class?" ;-)
P.S. Maybe you meant with "World War II is not discussed in Germany nearly as much as it is here" the war itself and not the Holocaust. In that you are right. We don't learn anything about the actual war.. about the armys how and when they moved around and all. All we learn is the background of the war. How Hitler came to power, what he did to the Jews, but not the actual war. (Only key-dates like when did what country join, when was D-Day, when Stalingrad). **
[url=http://imdb.com/title/tt0253474/board/nest/2499093]LINK[/url]
2003-08-27 01:12 | User Profile
Hopefully that incessant propaganda has had the opposite effect.
2003-08-27 04:39 | User Profile
As someone born in the '70s, I can attest to the fact that such heavy-handed Maoist tactis only serve to increase anti-Semitism amongst ordinary Germans. Hopefuly, more people will start asking: "Why"?
As to the so-called "Holocaust", [color=blue]those who think, doubt[/color]. Unfortunately, it is no longer permitted to think in Germany.
2003-08-29 04:30 | User Profile
It looks like more and more Germans are getting fed up with the big lie...
August 26, 2003
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
Some very interesting developments seem to be going on in Germany of interest to Revisionists. It looks like a serious effort is being made, partly with the silent agreement of the Powers-that-be, to dismantle the so-called "Holocaust" myth kind of by what we call salami tactic - one slice at a time.
The information below is incomplete, and I have been waiting for some of our more scholarly Revisionist folks to do an essay analysis - but so far, nada! I don't have time to do it or to undertake the necessary careful translations. So let me give you the rudiments.
At first, there was the Fritjof Meyer essay in an obscure but apparently scholarly publication called Osteuropa. Now Fritjof Meyer is not just anybody - he is a senior editor of Der Spiegel, one of the most important magazines in Germany. While not (yet) tackling the contested issue of "genocidal gassings", Meyer claimed that only some 375,000 people died in Third Reich concentration camps during the war - nowhere near the "Six Million" claimed.
Now to do a thing like that is heresy in Germany! The people held their breath.
Nothing happened.
Next, there were rumors that four different self-accusing "Holocaust Deniers" had dared four independent courts to charge them.
The courts did not oblige. Not enough evidence!
Then the flamboyant and controversial German attorney, Horst Mahler, did his thing. I have described it briefly already. Here I let Walter Mueller, the California publisher of a community paper, tell it how he heard it:
[START]
[Slightly edited]
"Lower German Court Says Its OK To Question Holocaust
Horst Mahler Says Only 375,000 Died At Auschwitz - German Court Agrees From Walter Mueller Commentary 8-27-03
Dr. Tom Sunic arrived in Sacramento yesterday and we had coffee this morning. He just came from a summer school, put on by the NPD in Saarbruecken, Germany. He was the interpreter for Horst Mahler.
As you know, the NPD (http://www.npd.de) has won a court case, which forces the German government to treat them like a major party, including funding.
Also incredible news about Horst Mahler's lawsuit:
Background: A while back "Der Spiegel" printed an article, written by [Fritjof Meyer], where [Meyer] points out that not more than 375,000 Jews had been killed.
In an ingenious move, Horst Mahler, who is an attorney, took the editor, the writer and himself to court for Volksverhetzung/holocaust-denial. The lower court declared that it was not holocaust denial to point out the true facts of the holocaust. This decision has not been appealed yet. It makes it possible for Germans now to question the holocaust, I guess, until somebody appeals the lower court decision.
Because of this court decision, Horst Mahler wanted to travel to Auschwitz to give a speech. However, German authorities confiscated his passport. [...]
Then, Horst Mahler went a step further, testing the courts decision by traveling to Wartburg, a famous German Fort, and displayed a banner, saying that the holocaust is a hoax, and that only 375,000 people died in Auschwitz. German authorities made pictures of the banner, however, [they] could not charge him under their "Volksverhetzung" law, because of the court decision.
If this is not awesome news for free speech and inquiry, I don't know what is. Wouldn't it be amazing if we had activists like this here in America.
[END]
Finally, I received a brief summary from someone via John Bryant who runs the popular website, www.thebirdman.org :
[START]
This is a highly interesting law-suit filed by Herr Glagau ... against the three top politicians in Germany. He is sueing them for "Failure to render assistance". This appears to be a German legal concept which requires a person to render assistance to another in case of need.
In German legalese 'person' seems to mean an individual OR an entire people. [Glagau] claims (rather convincingly so) that the three knew all along and certainly must know by now, that the Auschwitz myth is exactly that - a myth, no more and no less - and that this myth has been used to literally enslave the German people.
He goes on citing several obvious instances and situations proving his assertion, i.e. that Germany is being ruled by the Allies of WW2, using puppets, that these puppets are living high on the hog, while being the Step-'n-Fetchits for the victors of WW2.
He furthermore points out the fact that witnesses for the defense were kept from appearing at various concentration camp trials, witnesses which include former concentration camp inmate Rassinier, a French communist party official and revisionist author.
The law-suit also points out that several similar lawsuits have been filed in the past, only to disappear - and that the authorities have stonewalled every effort to get to the truth.
The suit essentially says that since the three in question are in powerful positions, as representatives of the German people, they are legally obliged to uncover the lies, thereby 'assisting' the German nation in her rehabilitation and 'assisting' her in stopping the continued outrageous Holohoax-blackmail payments.
[END]
Somebody NEEDS to tackle all this in a scholarly way and put some parameters around it, telling us what this might mean in the Grand Design of Things. Let me just finish by saying that I know Glagau from his writings - and I have read this latest in German. Glagau is now 90 years old, still sharp as a whip, and he essentially says: "See if I care...I will tell it now like it is!" Perhaps his law suit will dislodge the triste matter and bring some sanity back into Germany? I wish him all the luck.
I know what I would do if I were in Germany and in a leadership position. Now that the ball has start rolling, I would line up as many young people as I could and ask them to speak their own minds as loudly as they could about the Holocaust in a very public place. My guess is that would do it! In the meantime, scholars to the fore! This needs to be written up for the archives!
Ingrid
[url=http://zgrams.zundelsite.org/pipermail/zgrams/2003-August/000579.html]LINK[/url]