German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder this week used a ceremony commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago to declare that ordinary Germans were responsible for the Holocaust.
Speaking to an audience that included several Auschwitz survivors, Schröder said that the horrors of the concentration camp could not be explained by merely blaming the ”demon Hitler”.
”The evil of the Nazi ideology did not come out of nowhere. The brutalisation of thought and the lack of moral inhibitions had a history,” he said. ”One thing is clear: The Nazi ideology was willed by people and carried out by people.”
Schröder’s groundbreaking admission for a German head of state came as world leaders gathered in neighbouring Poland for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and amid confusion in Germany over how to deal with the country’s newly resurgent far right.
Germany’s red-green coalition government has faced calls to ban the neo-Nazi National Party of Germany (NPD) after several members staged a walkout last week during a minute’s silence for Holocaust victims.
Schröder delivered a stinging attack on right-wing extremists, declaring that Germany had not seen the last of anti-Semitism. Germany had a ”moral obligation” to keep alive the memory of the Nazis’ crimes and he urged Germans to remain vigilant so that the horrors of Auschwitz were not repeated.
”It can’t be denied that anti-Semitism still exists,” he said. ”Fighting it is the task of the whole of society. Anti-Semites should never be allowed to threaten or hurt Jewish citizens, not just in our country — and to bring shame upon our nation,” he said at Germany’s official commemoration of the anniversary, organised by the International Auschwitz Committee.
Germany’s neo-Nazi right has always enjoyed some support, but it now appears to be better organised and more professional. Last week the NPD’s leader, Holger Apfel, told the Saxon Parliament in Dresden that Britain and other Western allies during World War II were ”mass murderers”.
They had caused a holocaust of Germans by bombing the city, he said. The NPD made an unprecedented electoral breakthrough last September, winning 9% of the vote and 12 seats. This week Schröder urged all parties to combat ”new Nazis and old Nazis”.
He also reminded Germans that they bore a special responsibility for the Holocaust — even though the overwhelming majority of Germans now alive bore no guilt.
After the commemoration, a senior Jewish leader accused Europeans of trying to forget the past. Israel Singer, the leader of the World Jewish Congress, also made a thinly veiled attack on Britain’s Prince Harry for turning up at a fancy dress party dressed as a Nazi.
”While apologists clamour Holocaust fatigue, deniers receive open forums to spread their lies … We are experiencing insensitivity towards the Holocaust by Europe’s younger generation. Sometimes from the highest and most important families,” he said.
The most moving part of the commemoration, held in a Berlin theatre, came when two elderly Auschwitz survivors gave personal accounts of what had happened to them in the death camp.
In his speech the chancellor pointed out that Germany now had a flourishing Jewish community, which was Europe’s third largest. But he added: ”This doesn’t change the fact that these memories belong to our national identity.” — Â