Reply With QuoteA faux pax perhaps?
Holocaust contrition 'too much for new generation'
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20120531-42881.htmlGerman President Joachim Gauck has warned against elevating Holocaust commemoration to "a quasi-religious dimension, as he met Palestinian leaders in the West Bank on Thursday.Die Zeit, Gauck said Chancellor Angela Merkel's stated position that Israel's right to exist was a raison d' ιtat or national interest for Germany could be asking too much from the next generation.
Speaking to weekly newspaper
"This sentence by Mrs Merkel comes from the hearts of my generation," he said.
"Everything that we want to do should be guided by the goal that Israel should be protected as the homeland of the Jews," he said.
"This sentence hasn't just been born out of political rationale but from a deep contrition. It's a moral imperative to ourselves which makes me really worried about whether we can translate the magnitude of this demand into political action."
Gauck, who visited Israel this week, said he was not at all talking about drawing a line under the Holocaust debate. "But there's one tendency I don't want to follow pulling the perception of the Holocaust into a quasi-religious dimension, into something surreal," he said.
Gauck's comments came as he visited Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah. Gauck promised Abbas that Germany would continue to provide financial aid to the Palestinians currently amounting to 70 million a year as long as there was no solution to the Mideast conflict.
The president urged the Palestinians not to break off peace talks with Israel, saying he had urged Israeli leaders to exercise restraint on the settlement issue. Gauck also visited the opening of a German-funded girls' school in Burin in the West Bank, saying it raised "great hopes" for building a democratic and stable Palestinian state.
Gauck also told Die Zeit that he agreed with the intention of a statement by his predecessor Christian Wulff that Islam belongs to Germany. The comment stirred huge controversy in Germany. But Gauck said he would have put it differently. "I would have simply said that the Muslims who live here belong to Germany," he said.
A faux pax perhaps?
National interests and moral standards are not the same things.
That said, there will always be a special relationship between Germany and Israel because there is a moral obligation.
Germany would continue to provide financial aid to the Palestinians – currently amounting to €70 million a year – as long as there was no solution to the Mideast conflict.
Goodreason to never find a solution.
President Gauck is a good man and an applaudable propagator of freedom and democracy... however, he is not the head of government. It's not up to him to lay out what Germany's reason of state is and he is not to undermine the Chancellor's credibility. Also, for a man who seeks to take on the new generations' apathy and disenchantment with politics, he's taking quite the easy way out when suggesting new generations couldn't be expected to understand.
I'm free of guilt and so are my parents. I don't have to feel guilty of what has happened and I'd tell that even to the face of a Holocaust survivor. However, every human being has the sacred responsibility to guarantee a crime such as the Holocaust must never happen again, and the German people has it more than any other.
exactly, another Holocaust can happen in any country under the right conditions, not just Germany. Greece is having a surge of fascist groups being voted into govt due to the economic collapse and xenophobia. Scary echoes of the past.Originally Posted by muck
Since Germans are free from the guilt, why should they have any bigger responsibility to prevent genocides than any other people?
He said he himself doesnt feel any guilt.
He is not the German state.
You know, German state has no feelings, it cant feel guilt. The guilt that might be involved is felt by individual Germans.
I was born 1985, 40 years after the War ended, and I do not see any reason to support Israel more or less than any other state. Learn from history and work to never let racism and hatred gain the upper hand, yes. That should be the goal for all People on this Planet, not Germany alone anyway.
I guess that is what our President meant. That is no apology, but the Holocaust is simply not related to most Germans living today. The old Nazis are dying out and mostly long dead already, and they do not get a replacement.
So, if a generation dont feel anything from what happened a generation before, then there is no history possible. There are no obligations, no borders, no culture, no tradition, no morality.
you, Germans, as individuals, you shouldn't feel any guilt because you as individuals, you didn't do anything, but as a country and a culture, you carry a burden whatever you want it or not.
If you think that way, then you have not have learned anything from your past.
Well said Climber, very well said.
Societies share a common consciousness.
We as individuals don't bear guilt, this is true. We as a nation however... we have to accept our evolved-from-guilt responsibility for the national integrity and well-being of the State of Israel. No more, no less.
Are you a patriot? If so, you take pride in what your ancestors did - poets and thinkers, the land of the first automobile, the Miracle of Bern and all that. And yet these things were not of your making.
But what about their misdeeds, which neither were of your making? Can you claim one and ignore the other?
I don't think I can.
x 2 ............
In Germany, you have four kinds of people who're on bad terms with Israel and the Jews (in that order): Leftists, Muslims and Nazis. The largest group however is composed of ordinary Germans who - no offense meant, my fellow Teutonic members - just don't want to be remembered. They're sick of being portrayed as evil and being beaten with the "Nazi cudgel". I can't remember anymore who fathered this quote, but it's dead-on... After the Holocaust, the Germans will hate the Jews for what they did to them.
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