Archivo etiqueta «Nazismo»
Por Ariel Dorfman, escritor chileno (EL PAÍS, 24/08/06):
La primera vez que conocí a Günter Grass, nos peleamos furiosamente. Fue en marzo de 1975, si no recuerdo mal, que lo visité en su hogar cerca de Hamburgo, una amplia casa rural que daba a un río más plácido de lo que iba a ser, por cierto, nuestra relación tormentosa.
Al principio, todo anduvo sobre ruedas. Me había traído a ese lugar su gran amigo Freimut Duve, eminente editor, defensor de los derechos humanos y diputado alemán socialdemócrata por aquel distrito. Mientras Grass cocinaba una suculenta sopa de pescado -¡ya … Seguir leyendo
By John Berger, a novelist and critic (THE GUARDIAN, 21/08/06):
Without ethics man has no future. This is to say mankind without them cannot be itself. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities. They have nothing to do, however, with judging the actions of others. Such judgments are the prerogative of (often self-proclaimed) moralists. In ethics there is a humility; moralists are usually righteous.These thoughts come to my mind as I read the macabre denunciations being levelled today against Günter Grass. About him as a man and about his great work as a writer, they totally miss … Seguir leyendo
Por José Antonio Zarzalejos. Director de ABC (ABC, 20/08/06):
HA tenido razón Charlotte Knobloch, presidenta del Consejo Judío de Alemania, cuando suponía que la revelación de su pertenencia a las SS de Hitler ha sido una estratagema comercial de Günter Grass para promocionar su último libro, una autobiografía titulada «Pelando la cebolla». La obra, que iba a ser distribuida en septiembre, ha llegado a las librerías alemanas el pasado miércoles, de modo que, en medio de la polémica, ya se pueden leer las justificaciones del autor alemán, no tanto por su incorporación adolescente a la organización criminal dirigida por … Seguir leyendo
Por Rafael Argullol, escritor (EL PAÍS, 20/08/06):
La exposición de algunas esculturas de Arno Breker en la Schleswig-Holstein Haus de Schwerin, en Alemania, suscita una considerable controversia entre los partidarios de exhibir la obra del escultor y los reacios a esta idea. El caso de Arno Breker, el escultor de Hitler, es similar al de Leni Riefenstahl, la cineasta de Hitler, y cercano al de Albert Speer, el arquitecto de Hitler. El de este último es el más complejo, y sin duda el más grave, puesto que Speer participó como ministro en las tareas del Gobierno nazi, y en … Seguir leyendo
By Daniel Kehlmann, the author of the forthcoming novel “Measuring the World.” This article was translated from the German by Ross Benjamin (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 20/08/06):
A DIDACTIC play attempts to explain what man must do to make the world better and life more rational; a tragedy shows that life will never be rational and the world will never be good. Long before Bertolt Brecht, German culture was enamored with parables about the triumph of reason. Yet man is a tragic being, irrational and divided within himself, and so it is an enthralling spectacle when a life charted … Seguir leyendo
By Peter Gay, a professor emeritus of history at Yale, is the author of the forthcoming “Modernism: The Lure of Heresy.” (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 20/08/06):
INDIGNATION, it seems, is the most gratifying of all emotions. Nothing is quite so soothing as the feeling of superiority over sinners who have committed offenses that we are sure to be innocent of and that allow us to purse our lips in disdain: another giant with feet of clay!
I have been drawn to these sober reflections by the Günter Grass affair. So this scourge of hypocrites has shown himself a hypocrite, … Seguir leyendo
By Oliver Kamm (THE TIMES, 19/08/06):
“THIRTY-FIVE years after Auschwitz,” wrote the novelist Günter Grass in 1979, “the problem confronting Germans is once more: what shall we tell our children?” The answer, in the case of his own war record, turns out to have been “an artfully filleted account”. Grass caused a storm this week after belatedly disclosing that in 1944 he had joined the Waffen SS.
Grass is a significant writer, best known for his novels depicting the effects of Nazism on individual lives. His Danzig trilogy, starting with The Tin Drum (1959), secured his reputation. With the novelists … Seguir leyendo
By John Irving (THE GUARDIAN, 19/08/06):
How do I feel about what Kurt Vonnegut would describe as a “shit storm” of nationalist babbling in the German media, in the wake of my friend Günter Grass’s revelation that he was drafted into the Waffen SS at the age of 17? From what I have read of the editorials, and the lofty remarks of my fellow writers, critics, and journalists of various political persuasions, there has been a predictably sanctimonious dismantling of Grass’s life and work from the oh so cowardly standpoint of hindsight, from which so many so-called intellectuals safely take … Seguir leyendo
Por Fernando Sánchez Dragó, escritor; su última obra publicada es Muertes Paralelas (Editorial Planeta). En la actualidad, dirige y presenta el programa Las Noches Blancas en Telemadrid (EL MUNDO, 18/08/06):
Voy a cumplir 70 años. Es hora de que confiese. Llevo en el buche cosas que avergonzarían a cualquiera. No puedo seguir disimulando. Me acuso, padres y madres de la Santa Corrección Política, de haber fundado y capitaneado en mi niñez la Banda de la Buena Pipa.Debía de tener yo, cuando lo hice, cosa de siete años. Acababa de hacer la primera comunión y ya apuntaba, pese a ello, … Seguir leyendo
By Richard Cohen (THE WASHINGTON POST, 06/06/06):
I write with hesitation, with respect, with awe and with a profound, humbling and scary sense that I am about to go, as they say, above my pay grade. But what, I have to ask, did the pope mean by what he said at Auschwitz?
Pope Benedict XVI went late last month to that place where 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered — that memorial to the very worst in mankind, that factory whose sole product was death, and this is what he said: “In a place like this, words fail. In … Seguir leyendo
By David Cesarani, a research professor in history at Royal Holloway, University of London (THE GUARDIAN, 30/05/06):
The Pope’s visit to Auschwitz on Sunday was deeply moving, yet the outpouring of sentiment should not be allowed to mask some troubling aspects of the speech he delivered a stone’s throw from the ruins of the gas chambers where tens of thousands of Jews were murdered.
Pope Benedict XVI self-consciously followed in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II, seeking reconciliation between the oppressed and the oppressor. But whereas his Polish predecessor spoke for the victims of Nazi tyranny, Benedict announced: … Seguir leyendo
By Oliver Kamm (THE TIMES, 30/05/06):
“IT IS PARTICULARLY difficult for a Pope that comes from Germany to come here,” said Pope Benedict XVI at Auschwitz at the weekend. The difficulty lies in his being Pope more than being German — even a German of his generation. Benedict’s praying for forgiveness in his native language has been widely remarked on, but it was an apt gesture.
The agency directly responsible for the death camps — Nazi tyranny — was shattered and defeated 60 years ago. No fair critic would hold Benedict culpable for his involuntary conscription in the Hitler Youth. … Seguir leyendo
By Tamas Krausz, a professor of history at Elte University, Budapest (THE GUARDIAN, 22/03/06):
Sixty-two years ago this week, Hitler’s Wehrmacht began its blood-soaked occupation of Hungary. The country soon turned into a battlefield in defence of the Third Reich. The authoritarian regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy, appointed a Nazi-friendly prime minister, but real power was in the hands of Edmund Veesenmayer, Hitler’s resident in Budapest. The deportation of half a million Hungarian Jews to death camps was set in train.But these facts seemed to escape the notice of the supreme court of Hungary this month when it rehabilitated Laszlo … Seguir leyendo
Por César Antonio Molina, director del Instituto Cervantes (EL PAÍS, 08/03/06):
Después de las guerras napoleónicas, en 1816, el delfín Luis, futuro Luis I, llamó a Múnich al arquitecto Leo von Klenze para dar a su capital el empaque de gran ciudad que aún no tenía a pesar de albergar algunas joyas góticas y barrocas. El rey soñaba con revivir la antigua Atenas, y con este fin el arquitecto alzó magníficos edificios neoclásicos, todo alrededor de la Königsplatz. Pero al otro lado de la ciudad, en lo que hoy se conoce como Ludwigstrasse, el Renacimiento italiano fue inspiración dominante. Muchos … Seguir leyendo
Un filme sobrecogedor resucita a Hitler. Ian Kershaw es historiador y autor de la respetada biografía Hitler, publicada en España en dos tomos por la editorial Península. La película El hundimiento sobre los últimos días del Führer se ha estrenado esta semana en Alemania (EL MUNDO, 20/09/04).