unguided tour

The role of his life! A ghost, somewhere between dream and waking. A corpse, frozen into speechlessness.  The trial against John Demjanjuk exhibits for the world to see what has been daily routine in most German families since the end of World War II: silence.

If anything, the ghastly presence of John Demjanjuk — charged with murder of more than twenty-seven thousand Jewish prisoners at Sobibor — in a German courtroom proves that regarding the Holocaust the law has little power over the conscience of perpetrators. No judge, no lawyer will make them break their silence. They didn’t speak much of their crimes in Nuremberg and they remained mostly silent in Frankfurt, and so far we haven’t heard a word from Demjanjuk in Munich either. Deeds without doers. Genocide without perpetrators. A German way of life.

The law may fail to make the perpetrators admit their crimes, perhaps because it doesn’t always need their collaboration. In all likelihood, Demjanjuk will be convicted based on circumstantial evidence. But there are ways to end the silence. Why did it never occur to anyone to travel to Ohio where Demjanjuk lived for decades? Not to interrogate. Just to talk, to ask a few questions, to begin a conversation. Isn’t that what civilized people do?

The question is a rhetorical one, of course. For more than six decades Germans have been more than reluctant to talk with former Nazis — and who of my grandparents’ generation wasn’t one? — about their deeds and motives outside of the tightly regulated discourse defined by the law. What is true for the Holocaust is also true for the infamous State Security (Stasi) of East-Germany — which, by the way, had several thousand West-Germans on their payroll. While other countries emerging from a dictatorship have installed Truth Commissions to help resolve conflicts between victims and perpetrators, Germany  has sponsored memorials.

Freedom means the right to remain silent. Silence can be therapeutic, purifying. But silence is also a form of aggression — directed at oneself and at the other. Often silence provokes aggression: the desire to hurt, to crush, to elicit a reaction through the infliction of pain.

In the 1970s Germany defeated the terror of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). Why should Germans change their minds now?  Because very soon, when the last perpetrator will has passed away, the silence will be that of a graveyard. And then what?

Der Rest ist Schweigen?

This photograph of John (Iwan) Demjanjuk being wheeled into a German courtroom in Munich reminds me of my grandfather shortly before he died: an old man, ill and barely conscious; an old Nazi who lived a full life, had children, grandchildren, a nice house in the suburbs; a perpetrator who saw himself as victim; a typical “Mitläufer” who for fear of his and his family’s life joined the NSDAP,  avoided resistance,  hung a photograph of Hitler in his living room, and somehow forgot to take it down when the Nazis no longer officially ruled Germany — that’s how I remember my grandfather. (more…)

Charges have been dropped against German artist Ottmar Hörl accused of displaying Nazi symbols in public. Authorities were not amused by his installation of an array of silver and golden garden gnomes, their right arms raised in Hitler salute. (more…)

Many things are verboten in Germany. For example, publicly displaying symbols of Nazi organizations. The latest case of violation of this law has been reported from Nuremberg where a golden garden gnome performing the Heil Hitler salute was exhibited in the window of an art gallery. The gnome was created by German artist Ottmar Hörl who is now under investigation from the office of the public prosecutor. It’s art, Hörl defends himself. It’s verboten, the representatives of the law insist. (more…)

The prefix neo signifies “a new, revived or modified form of some doctrine, belief, practice, language, artistic style or designating those who advocate, adopt or use it.” (OED)
A neo-Nazi is thus someone who supports the revival and modification of Nazism or Nazi ideological principles, or propagates a modified form of Nazism. But did Nazism ever disappear? And how are neo-Nazis different from Nazis? (more…)