home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Time - Man of the Year
/
Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
/
moy
/
121492
/
1214021.000
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1993-04-08
|
5KB
|
92 lines
GERMANY, Page 44Refractions from the Sins of the Fathers
By MICHAEL BLUMENTHAL
Michael Blumenthal is a poet and novelist whose most recent
book is The Wages of Goodness (1992). He lectures at Harvard
University and is currently a Fulbright fellow in Budapest.
For the son of German-Jewish refugees who escaped, by the
skin of their teeth and the vicissitudes of luck, the ravages of
the Nazi Holocaust, it is easy -- a bit too easy, I suspect --
to feel an almost visceral dislike for the Germans, to be
unwilling, in matters moral, to ever give them the benefit of
the doubt. After all, it was not merely a handful but millions
of Germans who at least part-knowingly acquiesced in what still
seems the unspeakable: the organized, systematic gassing and
torture of 11 million innocent Jews, Gypsies and others that
have left scars that may take all of remaining human history to
heal, and memories that ought never be erased.
So the Germans, either justly or unjustly, are held to a
higher burden of proof when moral and racial matters, such as
the current treatment and status of Germany's estimated 1.4
million refugees, are at stake. And though the sins of the
fathers are, rightfully or wrongly, visited upon the sons, it is
also a fact that the victimization of the fathers may lead to
a certain moral blind spot in the sons. So, in judging the
present emotion-filled crisis of the refugee presence in
Germany, it seems to me all the more necessary to strive for an
evenhandedness and objectivity in our judgment, lest yet
another tragic lesson of history be re-enacted in our time --
namely, that all ethnic and religious hatreds and tragedies
perpetuate and reinforce one another.
Whether the "new" generation of Germans -- those who by the
mere fact of their postwar birth cannot in any way be held
responsible for the sins of their ancestors -- deserve to be
held to a different standard than the rest of us is, no doubt, a
question best answered by moral philosophers and theologians.
For myself, an affirmative answer would once again apply the
kind of racial double standard that has time and again led to
tragedy. For it is morally simplistic, if at times inviting, to
use the irreparability of the German crimes of the Nazi era as a
justification for dismissing whatever efforts individual Germans
may be making at reparation and repentance today. (How much more
moral, we might ask, were America's sins of slavery, and how
adequate have our own efforts to "repair" them been?) There is
a certain easy solace, I fear, in labeling one crime as
history's worst, one people as history's most egregious
villains. It allows the rest of us, by implication, to be
subjected to a lower standard of morality, to enjoy an easier
sleep.
So it is useful, I think, to cast a "cold eye" on
contemporary Germany's record vis-a-vis Gypsies and others
before we judge it too harshly, to understand where Germany and
most contemporary Germans -- for example, the 350,000 who
recently marched against racism in Berlin -- stand before we
pronounce our easy and self-righteous j'accuse. We might
remember, for example, that the German constitution has for
decades included one of the most liberal and generous policies
toward political asylum seekers anywhere in the world.
That policy has guaranteed to all who merely utter the word
Asyl, or asylum, on German soil (expected to reach 500,000 by
the end of this year alone) the right to be sheltered and fed
during the months, and sometimes years, while their cases are
reviewed. We might consider that in any nation with more than
50% of the labor force suffering some sort of "voluntary" or
involuntary unemployment, as is the case in what was formerly
East Germany, the presence of so many unemployed refugees,
supported at government expense, would be the target of economic
unrest and accumulated rage. We should remember that for every
anarchic German throwing eggs and tomatoes and paint bombs at
President Richard von Weizsacker the other week, there were
thousands more standing up -- rather than by, as they did during
the Nazi era -- to proclaim their shame at their country's past
and their repugnance for this particular aspect of its present.
We should look at all this before -- in our haste to
condemn the Germans and relieve ourselves of our own moral
burdens -- the sins of the fathers now become, in the utmost of
ironies, the sins of someone else's sons.