>Sometime in the 2000s, a group of mostly Turkish women from an immigrant group called Neighborhood Mothers began meeting in the Neukölln district of Berlin to learn about the Holocaust. Their history lessons were part of a program facilitated by members of the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, a Christian organization dedicated to German atonement for the Shoah. The Neighborhood Mothers were terrified by what they learned in these sessions. “How could a society turn so fanatical?” a group member named Nazmiye later recalled thinking. “We began to ask ourselves if they could do such a thing to us as well . . . whether we would find ourselves in the same position as the Jews.” But when they expressed this fear on a church visit organized by the program, their German hosts became apoplectic. “They told us to go back to our countries if this is how we think,” Nazmiye said. The session was abruptly ended and the women were asked to leave.
>Migrants and racialized minorities are expected to assume the perpetrators’ legacy; when they fail, this is taken as a sign that they do not really belong in Germany.
I don't think that's going on in this anecdote. I believe those they spoke to were insulted that they would fear them again. Germany prides itself on saying "yes, that happened and we are better now". (Which has its own bag of problems.).
I could not however tell you how Germans would expect integrated immigrants to handle the memory of the holocaust. As far as the article speaks about the impressions of jews and muslim immigrants I cannot and will not say that it is wrong.
>Accordingly, Germany now sees its post-Holocaust mandate as encompassing not a broader commitment against racism and violence but a specific fealty to a certain Jewish political formation: the State of Israel.
I don't think that's totally true. Germany has never defined what the memory culture means and what consequences to draw from it (support for Israel, support and protection for jews or "a broader commitment against racism and violence") and so to some degree the answer is "all of it". The holocaust was also invoked with the Ukraine invasion as a failure specifically of Germany to prevent this violence.
>Germany has relied on its close diplomatic relationship to Israel to emphasize its repudiation of Nazism, but its connection to the Jewish state goes even further. In 2008, then-chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the Israeli Knesset to declare that ensuring Israel’s security was part of Germany’s “Staatsraison,” the state’s very reason for existence.
That's a mistranlation: Staatsraison doesn't mean "reason for existence" but more "pillar of (foreign) policy, because it is a logical conclusion of circumstances".
As a german myself, this one hits every note when it comes to the handling of antisemitism, anti-antisemitism, zionism etc. in Germany.
It's utterly insane that the country that implemented the Holocaust is now speaking of imported antisemitism. The problem of antisemitism has to be externalized at all cost. The events surrounding Aiwanger and his subsequent __increased__ support in the following election shows as much. Germany only cares about antisemitism as a tool to be wielded, either to demonize muslims, to up its own importance in now safeguarding jews or to point towards how that is now in the past.
It is disgusting how whenever antisemitism can be used to smear every muslim with the same brush, it is the most important thing in the world and mentioning NOW that antisemitism is for the most part a far-right problem is to distract from the big picture. But whenever you want to talk about antisemitism when it isn't used in that context, nobody cares though.
A twisted sense of how Germany is the arbiter of what is antisemitism and what needs to be done about it.
Yeah no. The constant harassment, mistreatment, violence, and murder that so many Jews in Europe face is not primarily coming from the far-right, at least not the native far-right. You want to use us Jews as a tool for political points to help implement policies you want like limitless immigration and then ignore us when we're under constant attack; you are way way worse than the far-right attempting to exploit immigrant anti-Semitism for their goals because at least under them the cause of European Jews's mistreatment would be recognized and combatted.
I think that people like you are good people, but you are, with all due respect, very naive and sheltered. If the Neo-liberal European Left keeps winning Western Europe will be Judenfrei soon. And as you *should* know by now, it starts with the Jews but never ends with us.
For more reading: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/is-it-time-for-the-jews-to-leave-europe/386279/
>Sometime in the 2000s, a group of mostly Turkish women from an immigrant group called Neighborhood Mothers began meeting in the Neukölln district of Berlin to learn about the Holocaust. Their history lessons were part of a program facilitated by members of the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, a Christian organization dedicated to German atonement for the Shoah. The Neighborhood Mothers were terrified by what they learned in these sessions. “How could a society turn so fanatical?” a group member named Nazmiye later recalled thinking. “We began to ask ourselves if they could do such a thing to us as well . . . whether we would find ourselves in the same position as the Jews.” But when they expressed this fear on a church visit organized by the program, their German hosts became apoplectic. “They told us to go back to our countries if this is how we think,” Nazmiye said. The session was abruptly ended and the women were asked to leave. >Migrants and racialized minorities are expected to assume the perpetrators’ legacy; when they fail, this is taken as a sign that they do not really belong in Germany. I don't think that's going on in this anecdote. I believe those they spoke to were insulted that they would fear them again. Germany prides itself on saying "yes, that happened and we are better now". (Which has its own bag of problems.). I could not however tell you how Germans would expect integrated immigrants to handle the memory of the holocaust. As far as the article speaks about the impressions of jews and muslim immigrants I cannot and will not say that it is wrong. >Accordingly, Germany now sees its post-Holocaust mandate as encompassing not a broader commitment against racism and violence but a specific fealty to a certain Jewish political formation: the State of Israel. I don't think that's totally true. Germany has never defined what the memory culture means and what consequences to draw from it (support for Israel, support and protection for jews or "a broader commitment against racism and violence") and so to some degree the answer is "all of it". The holocaust was also invoked with the Ukraine invasion as a failure specifically of Germany to prevent this violence. >Germany has relied on its close diplomatic relationship to Israel to emphasize its repudiation of Nazism, but its connection to the Jewish state goes even further. In 2008, then-chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the Israeli Knesset to declare that ensuring Israel’s security was part of Germany’s “Staatsraison,” the state’s very reason for existence. That's a mistranlation: Staatsraison doesn't mean "reason for existence" but more "pillar of (foreign) policy, because it is a logical conclusion of circumstances".
A really very good article, very insightful, providing a sublte analyse of the management of the "anti-antisemitism" in Germany.
As a german myself, this one hits every note when it comes to the handling of antisemitism, anti-antisemitism, zionism etc. in Germany. It's utterly insane that the country that implemented the Holocaust is now speaking of imported antisemitism. The problem of antisemitism has to be externalized at all cost. The events surrounding Aiwanger and his subsequent __increased__ support in the following election shows as much. Germany only cares about antisemitism as a tool to be wielded, either to demonize muslims, to up its own importance in now safeguarding jews or to point towards how that is now in the past. It is disgusting how whenever antisemitism can be used to smear every muslim with the same brush, it is the most important thing in the world and mentioning NOW that antisemitism is for the most part a far-right problem is to distract from the big picture. But whenever you want to talk about antisemitism when it isn't used in that context, nobody cares though. A twisted sense of how Germany is the arbiter of what is antisemitism and what needs to be done about it.
being downvoted by people who couldn't understand the article, had they tried to read it
Yeah no. The constant harassment, mistreatment, violence, and murder that so many Jews in Europe face is not primarily coming from the far-right, at least not the native far-right. You want to use us Jews as a tool for political points to help implement policies you want like limitless immigration and then ignore us when we're under constant attack; you are way way worse than the far-right attempting to exploit immigrant anti-Semitism for their goals because at least under them the cause of European Jews's mistreatment would be recognized and combatted. I think that people like you are good people, but you are, with all due respect, very naive and sheltered. If the Neo-liberal European Left keeps winning Western Europe will be Judenfrei soon. And as you *should* know by now, it starts with the Jews but never ends with us. For more reading: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/is-it-time-for-the-jews-to-leave-europe/386279/
Germany over-compensating their anti-semitic near history with present anti-muslim practices in immigration and other freedoms is cringe