Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Yes, I realize it's ancient history. I realize fifty years have passed since World War II, but I defy anybody traveling from Prague to Berlin not to want to fling themselves out of the train window when they hear this heavily-accented message over the intercom:

"We have arrived now at the German border station. Thank you for riding with us. Goodbye."

I was perfectly willing to forgive Germany. They said they're sorry a million times, and at some point you have to let it go. But then I got to the actual country, the place where it all happened, and a thought hit my brain and just would not let go:

So, this is where Hitler killed six million people in his attempt to take over the world.

Um, why is this place still here?

See, there are certain things you can't recover from. If your wife catches you naked in a hot tub with a troop of Boy Scouts, you can't just say, "Okay, I've made a serious mistake, but let's just say I'm sorry and start over from square one." No, there's a price to pay, and even on this magnitude that price includes things like jail, divorce, or gunplay.

Every once in a while I realize I've made a fatal error. "Well, it was a good try 'til now," I tell myself as I pack up my stuff and hit the road, ditching my old name and saying farewell to my old life. And that's just prompted by stuff like farting in bed.

In Germany, they didn't even change their name.

Now, I know they're sorry. They've said so more than once, and the city is liberally dotted with monuments to their mistakes. Unfortunately, to see the monuments is to recognize that this isn't nearly enough. A thousand cement coffins to commemorate six million people killed? That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. It's too small, too cheap, too easy. It's like totalling your boyfriend's Jaguar and then offering him a Kit Kat bar in recompense.

Not enough? Okay, I'll toss in some Almond Roca too.

The Germans recognize their failure to address the scale of the matter, so the monuments keep going up. "Do you get what we did?" a government minister asks. "I mean really, really get what we did?"

His coworker sighs. "It's beyond comprehension, really." Pause. "Why don't we express our remorse to the world with a pointy cement obelisk?"

"Brilliant!" the minister says. "We can use that big empty space by the Reichstag where Hitler used to parade the troops."

It's sad. It's fruitless. And now, ironically, every new monument just seems to confirm the impossibility. The air has been tainted; the ground has been spoiled. The crime was just too big. This is a past that demands that the country be relegated to history in the same way its victims were.

So, Germany, I know you're sorry. I know you're a beautiful land full of terrific people. But as long there's shame and nuclear weapons in the world, you should not exist.

9 comments:

dpaste said...

Technically, most of the killing didn't happen in Germany. In typically efficient fashion, they outsourced a lot of it.

Honestly, I forgave them long ago. If it weren't for modern technology, they wouldn't have done any worse than Spain or England or any country in Eastern Europe.

Luke_Sydney said...

Ah Roman, is this your inner American talking ? To make people pay, to crush them completely, I wonder if you see the irony from your post about stupid people and litigation. To judge the the current generation of Germans who have at least attempted to pay for the sins of the past, as you would judge those that committed the horror in the first place is completely stupid. You can't escape the war in Germany - did you notice the bullet marks on public buildings, monuments, the Brandenburg Gate, the Kaiser Wilhem Church ? The wounds are there, they are real for the Germans, so is their shame and guilt and incomprehension at the past reflected in so many memorials. Not hidden away on a prison camp island or protected under Government privilage. Note America didn't enter the war on moral grounds but ostensibly over Pearl Harbour and other economic reasons.

Anatomicsd said...

Yep. Americans should definitely feel a moral superiority over those pesky Krauts. After all we'd never do anything so inhumane. Well...I suppose there was that whole slavery thing...

RomanHans said...

Moral superiority? Hardly. We're the idiots who claimed "liberty and justice for all" when gays could be fired for being gay and it was illegal for whites and blacks to intermarry. But at least we have the sense to know we need to change our names after we do something wrong.

Anonymous said...

Okay, enough of all this high-mindedness, it's time to pick nits. The second world war didn't end fifty years ago - it used to have ended fifty years ago, but now it's sixty-three years ago. Amazing how times flies by when you're having Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. And maybe just a little taste of the Falklands and Serbia.

Paul said...

The first time I entered Germany, I felt sick to my stomach, and experienced a wave of self-loathing because of visiting the country that had perpetrated so much evil. But I've been back many times since then, and have come to respect Germans for how they are facing up to history, in ways that other countries do not.

I know that you are being hyperbolic here, but if Germany were to cease to exist, what would happen? Would the people and the territory join Austria? Belgium? Switzerland? All of these countries have much to be ashamed of as well. Join Canada or the USA? I don't want to minimize the Holocaust, but I think it is important to remember that Germany does not have a monopoly on evil acts.

Luke_Sydney said...

Paul, a monoploy on evil acts ? Germany ? What a silly statement. History is littered with evil regimes. The scale of WWII and the holocust is unimaginable but doesn't provide the Germans with a monoploy on horror. I wonder how you feel about Israel/Palestine ? The IRA ? Pol Pot ? The contiunous underhanded US Government interferance in Soverign States and legitimised terrorism? Bosnian/Serbs - actually "ethnic cleansing" anywhere, Apertheid ? Robert Mugabe? One man under the guise of Nationalism created such an envoirnment of national pride and fear that he sent his country to war, destoryed it and left it without a single friend, he imprisoned those who spoke out or he regarded as enemies on a far away island... I wonder what Hitler would have made of George W Bush.

RomanHans said...

George W. Bush's reelection proved that the majority of Americans are either

-- Wealthy, and supportive of politicians who'll preserve their wealth; or

-- stupid.

However, he's about 5,999,990 dead people short of a Holocaust. Sure, the war is wrong -- but isn't one side wrong in every war? His brainless arrogance doesn't mark him as unique.

Paul hit the nail on the head when he mentioned the sick feeling he got entering Germany. That's what this story is about. You can say the glass is half full and all the monuments and bulletholes are evidence of their shame, but I'm a glass-half-empty guy who says you don't burn down somebody's garden and then send them flowers to say you're sorry.

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