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Dissenting Vote

Monday, June 13, 2005

Holocaust Memorial as Continuation of the "Third Reich"

The Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel had in laster Saturday's issue an interview with the journalist and Spiegel author Henryk M. Broder and Wolfgang Menge. They discussed the new Holocaust Memorial in Berlin just south of Brandenburg Gate, or how it is Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe officially called the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Here some bits from the interview translated by me:
Broder: There is a embarrassing example for suggestive architecture in Berlin: the Jewish Museum by Daniel Libeskind. If there were two charlatans in architecture, that would be Libeskind and Eisenman. There the worst thing is the Tower of Silence. People go in it, close the door behind them, and leave totally distressed and say, now we know, how Jews felt in a cattle wagon. They know shit. [...]
Broder: I am against normality. The demand for normality is itself abnormal. The German normality towards Jews was always antisemitic. Given that I rather hold onto the non-antisemtic anomality, before I want to return to antisemitic normality. [...]
Broder: [...] That thing is there now, probably for the next 1000 years. I regard the memorial as the continuation of the "Third Reich" with means of sculpture. [...]
Tagesspiegel: Do we need that memorial?
Broder: Me not. Maybe "we". On a trip abroad a few years ago I talked to a German consoler. This fellow told me: We need this memorial. I asked him, how "we" is supposed to be. He said the Department for Foreign Affairs. For our work in foreign countries. Great, I said, just a bummer, that my mum does not live anymore. She would have glad to hear, that she was not in vain in the camp.
Tagesspiegel: Do the Germans react politically correct to the memorial?
Broder:Yes, they ask over and over, why the Jews let themselves just get slaughtered by the Nazis. But when jew don't just let themselves get slauhtered as today in Israel, then that not alright either. Isn't it interesting that 70 percent of all Germans think the biggest danger for world peace is Israel? To learn from history? Bullshit. The memorial does not help much either.
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Here you can read the whole interview in a babelfish translation.
Just one more word about Henryk M. Broder. One of his most well know statements is: "The Germans won't forgive the Jews for Auschwitz."

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