Ma lot is expected of the Jews in this country, in the country that planned and carried out the mass murder: their fears are played down, often even dismissed as “hysteria”. Their warnings are brushed aside with the remark that there is worse discrimination today and that virulent hatred of Jews is a thing of the past or is only localized on the extreme right. Their trauma is exaggerated, leveled off with the wish to “finally draw a line”, their grief undignified as a result, the unique crime against humanity relativized by crude comparisons.
And the flowery culture of official political Germany with its Sunday slogans “resolutely oppose”, “resist the beginnings”, with all the harshness of the law” and “uncompromisingly against any form of anti-Semitism” can only sound like mockery, since the promises and Incantations of a realpolitik that doesn’t do everything, doesn’t fight anti-Semitism consistently and without exception.
Instead of doing something seriously and effectively, with every scandal one cultivates an ad hoc dismay that is quickly discarded. Political business goes on and combating anti-Semitism is not high on the agenda. “Fighting anti-Semitism light” determines political events: criticizing bullies and extremists, right-wing populists and Islamist hate preachers as anti-Semitic hardly meets with resistance and can be operated as a comfortable consensus. Because anti-Semites are always the others, they are those from the other political milieu. Just don’t pay attention in your own circle and just don’t alienate your partner with criticism.
For years it has been observed that the center and also many media have lost the feeling for the explosiveness and the poison of certain statements. There is a lack of awareness of what language can do and a lack of sensitivity to the feelings of the victims and victims’ relatives.
Germany allows itself the unbearable ease of coming to terms with the past, which can be pursued without much pain and without great effort. It’s so easy and so convenient to put hatred of Jews in a big box with everything that has anything to do with hostilities. The common collective category “anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia” with the generic term “group-focused enmity” allows a light enlightenment with a soft definition of anti-Semitism.
Learn from the Germans?
This excludes the long cultural history and makes dealing with anti-Jewish acts easy to maintain. Everything is genocide, everything is colonialism, everything is white supremacy. Everything softened. In addition, you don’t have to be particularly ashamed of the past, because every country is somehow xenophobic and aggressive, isn’t it? In Germany, one rises above one’s special responsibility (even if this is brought up at every opportunity) and hides the singularity of hatred of Jews.
The confrontation with National Socialism and its crimes is considered by many to be particularly successful. For a number of years, Germany’s supposedly “exemplary reappraisal policy” has even been increasingly cited. “Learn from the Germans?” What exactly should one learn from the Germans who murdered six million Jews in cold blood?
That they were “masters of death” in murder, as Celan put it in his Death Fugue? That after 1945, for more than two decades, they stubbornly resisted even addressing this crime against humanity, let alone solving it? That they still dodge taking serious action against the ever-spreading everyday and cultural hatred of Jews, that they shrug their shoulders and indulge in their disinterest instead of showing solidarity? That it was never possible to develop deep, insightful empathy for the extent of the suffering?
That in the end they leave it up to the Jewish people in Germany, i.e. the descendants of the victims, to issue serious warnings? That they perceive this reminder as an impertinence? That they have not yet understood and have not internalized either cognitively or emotionally, that the destruction of Jewish life is also a part of the destruction of the cultural integrity of Germany and Europe, as well as the loss of belief in the principles of the Enlightenment and humanity and by no means only individually and particularly the small Jewish minority, but universally affected mankind? That they didn’t realize how a vital piece of Germany was being destroyed forever?
shared memory
Your failure to recognize that remembrance only has a future together and must not be divided into a Jewish and a non-Jewish culture of remembrance? We can indeed learn all this from the Germans!
Overall, German society rests too much in its feel-good habit, saying that enough has been done. Too “much of culture of remembrance”, it is now said, could possibly even spark hostile feelings towards Jews. The knowledge of science and that of society are diametrically opposed. Cognitively, the perceived too much corresponds to too little, because surveys have shown for years that knowledge of Jewish life and history is rudimentary and limited. Precisely because so many Germans have learned nothing from the past, the old ghosts from all cellars are now powerfully coming to light.
Neither prevention through education nor repression through bans and laws are sufficient in the fight against anti-Semitism. They are not instruments to drive the spiritual poison out of society. An inner rethinking in civil society is needed that follows not only cognitive but also emotional intelligence. This presupposes that feelings such as empathy and identification are formed and internalized. Without this emotional dimension of shared memory, there is no common future. Shame, which is rejected as a burden, plays a decisive role here. All those who are involved in inter-religious dialogue on an equal footing, who live responsibility, have long understood this.
Shame doesn’t have to be something distressing and destabilizing once you understand that having a sense of responsibility is part of moral greatness and integrity. Shame as an emotion that is positive and stabilizing for one’s self-confidence and for collective memory. The admission that people can do unimaginably terrible things to other people and that you have to take action against this injustice in order to maintain a humane society and to be able to look in the mirror, that’s not a weakness, that’s humanity and being human in the best sense of the word.
However, without this emotional insight and a shared memory, Jewish mourning will always remain lonely.
This text offers excerpts from “The Loneliness of Jewish Mourning and Why the Bundestag Should Have Cried”, published in Monika Schwarz-Friesel’s 2022 book “Toxic language and mental violence. How anti-Jewish patterns of thinking and feelings have shaped our communication for centuries“, published by attempt.