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Holocaust denial in Germany and other countries
Axtol
Posts: 8,480 Forum Member
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My family are going to Germany soon for a holiday and we talked about this and I wanted to know what other people felt about it. It's not about whether you think the holocaust happened or not, because I would say there's simply overwhelming proof it did I am more interested in knowing whether German laws on denying it are contrary to freedom of speech. For me it feels like it goes one step further than a restriction on freedom of speech, it's almost telling you what you're not allowed to believe in. In this country we don't tell neo nazi racists that they aren't allowed to believe in an Aryan race and we don't say they aren't allowed to believe that black people are inferior. We simply ostracize them for those views and only take legal action if they do something about them such as hate crime. I think someone should be able to say that they don't think the holocaust happens. Surely they have a right to have an opinion even if it's one that the rest of us hate?
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Not many of those alive now agree with what happened and being associated with something you had nothing to do with can't be very nice for them
It would be far more respectful of them to admit that it happened and to feel shame for the fact it happened.
Even in 2014, we're still living in an age where a middle aged German living now could have had several relatives in the 2nd world war torturing and killing innocent jews in concentration camps.
We went into the morgue and saw what remained of the crematorium, the remains of a SS training camp are next to the camp.
It's a very emotive experience.
I wondered afterward what it must be like knowing that your father or grandfather assisted in the atrocities within that camp, and other camps.
It's no wonder the present generation are reluctant to acknowledge that period.
It wasn't just jews but pretty much anyone the nazi's didn't like as an ethnic group like gypsies.
I'm sure if we probably knew half the stuff that went on during the war our family members did we'd probably be ashamed to a degree. War is hell and its a phrase that sums it up.
But don't forget even in nazi germany there was always hope with people willing to risk death to help other to safety so to mark an entire country would be wrong to say the least
the numbers MAY be in question, but it's like being a sun rise denier!
...you do get that we're talking about them not allowing Holocaust denial, right? Germany very much DOES admit it happened and feel shame for it.
I think the law applies to all deceased persons. Not just those who died at the hand sof the Nazis.
It's still close enough for me I think.
They don't believe that they are the same people in thought, have as little comprehension how such events can possibly be allowed, and don't believe that they will ever allow it to happen again.
They are broad brush laws, but yes I agree that there is a leaning as you describe, and they were brought into place to specifically deal with fascist elements.
Badly worded.
Not just Jews. Eastern European prisoners of war were treated just as badly on that front. Experimented on and murdered / starved to death.
One example is that over 800,000 Soviet soldiers surrendered when Ukraine was taken, and only about 20,000 survived the following four years.
Personally, I think an exception to freedom of speech can be made in this case, bearing in mind what undeniably happened.
I heartily agree with the law. They are not the only country.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/insights/pdf/bazyler.pdf .
We would have to be on that shameful list.
First and foremost has been the reuniting of the two postwar Germanies. We were for decades more familiar with WEST Germany - a nation that was reconstructed to be intentionally be a good friend and ally...and SO much was swept under the carpet at the time. What became West Germany wasn't ever "de-Nazified", no matter what's claimed - a policy of investigation into wartime actiuoins etc. carried out by the Occupying Powers; it turned out to be so damn slowwwwwww in practice that the Allies couldn't handle the administrative burden of it, so they turned it over to the restructured German civil authorities - who promptly STOPPED it three months later!!!
So Holocaust Denial, as well as a latent strain of Nazism, was never ever fully eradicated from West Germany...
But it certainly was in EAST Germany! We may think we know ehat happened in East germany from movies like "The Lives Of Others" - but that was the East Germany of decades into the Cold War...NOT the East Germany still occupied by the Soviets for the first decade or so after 1945. East Germans were thoroughly make to know they were conquered, believe me; the lootings, the mass arrests, the organised rapes etc. continued for years, used by the Red Army as punishments for families, streets...whole communities as necessary.
What happened in the 1990s was that a thoroughly reconstructed COMMUNIST East Germany, taught by pain and fear that it had indeed been beaten in WWII....got rammed together with a Western Capitalist, free market economy (and very successful at it!) West Germany....and the result of that culture clash was several years of economic decline in the West, AND in the East, as virtually all of East Germany's industry closed and collapsed. In that period, just as in 1930-33...extremes of belief flourished for a brief time, and there was indeed a resurgence of that latent Nazism in Germany. It manifested differently from the 1930s, thank god - publically, as a neo-Nazi wave of stupid, pig ignorant boot-boys, easily suppressed....but also privately, in quiet corners, with the "maybe Hitler was right after all" idea. And foremost among the planks of THAT particular hidden neo-nazism, the sort of lowlevel nazism that was never eradicated and moved from generation to generation at the teat...was the belief....or the professing to believe ;-)...that the Holocaust never happened, it's all a put-up job,...Hitler would never have done such a thing...
The two things - Nazism and Holocaust Denial - have become intricately bound together...and for many years in the West, you COULD deny the Holocaust without being punished, as a way of expressing your position on Hitler and the Nazis ;-) But in the 1990s, Germany reunited began to "clean house", as the East came to dominate the reunified state again. it's strange - it certainly shouldn't have, given the parlous state of its economy before and after Reunification - but look at the number of former EAST German party activists or outright...ahem, "reformed"...Communists now in the German government!
So people who believe in uncategorically free speech may not accept Holocaust Denial laws in Germany...but they don't drill down further and see what those laws are actually being used to combat and eradicate. It's being used to destroy at its roots the unltimate opponents of Free Speech ;-)
Do you think the subject is likely to arise while you're on holiday?
The problem is HOW normal phrases etc. are interpreted by those around you.
You'd suprised how many of the prosecutions in Germany are for things as simple as saying "This would never have happened when I was a child..." or "They can't even make the trains run on time nowadays..." and the problem is with Germans around people who say such lowlevel things interpreting them as pro-Nazi sentiment ;-) One case I've heard of was brought against a guy who complained that whatever public event he and his family were at, that they were "packed in like cattle"...which was taken by those around him to be an insulting reference to Jews being crowded onto cattle wagons on their way to the camps