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EuropaUnión Europea, ,

Eva Erben termina de hablar ante alumnos en un instituto de Múnich sobre cómo sobrevivió a un campo de exterminio nazi cuando era niña. Se toca uno de sus pendientes de perla, se recoloca el pañuelo, los ojos verdes brillantes, las manos arqueadas por la artritis, y camina hacia la salida bajo un halo de admiración, pero también de preocupación y fragilidad. La memoria viva del Holocausto se extingue y Alemania cuestiona su cultura de la memoria.

Este país lleva décadas trabajando la culpa y la responsabilidad del Holocausto y, sin embargo, el conflicto de Gaza ha mostrado grietas en lo que parecía un sólido iceberg de historia.…  Seguir leyendo »

Fans of Rammstein music band queue under portraits of band members prior to a concert at Wankdorf Stadium in Bern on June 17, 2023.

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It’s hard to overlook the way that the tumult and horror prompted by recent charges of sexual misconduct against German band Rammstein reflects the wild scenes that play out at its live performances. For nearly 30 years, the six-man industrial group hailing from East Germany has growled dark and ribald lyrics during stage shows of extravagant pyrotechnics, violent play-acting, and ear-splitting instrumentals. In light of the accusations, the giant dildos that launch fireballs and standards of its repertoire such as “Pussy” are finally being examined in a much more exacting light.

Over the past month, several women spoke up about the band’s practiced system of coercing young women into post-show sex with frontman Till Lindemann.…  Seguir leyendo »

Forced laborers construct the Krupp factory at Auschwitz during World World II. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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In December, a German court made headlines when it convicted a 97-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary for her role in the murder of over 10,000 people during the war. The decision to pursue a crime 77 years after the end of World War II is the latest in Germany’s assurance of its utmost commitment to atoning for the Holocaust.

Across the United States and Europe, the Holocaust is rapidly fading from memory, but Germany is trying to prove that it will never forget. In addition to prosecuting Nazis, the country has been a leader in ensuring Holocaust education is a core part of the school system.…  Seguir leyendo »

Irmgard Furchner, 97, appears in court for the verdict in her trial on Dec. 20 in Itzehoe, Germany. (Christian Charisius/AP)

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This month, a German court convicted Irmgard Furchner as an accessory to the murder of 10,505 people. From 1943 to 1945, Furchner served as the secretary to the commandant of Stutthof, an SS concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Bizarrely, because the 97-year-old defendant had begun her secretarial duties at 18, she was tried in juvenile court. Partly for this reason, the court gave a lenient sentence of two years, suspended. Furchner might be the last person convicted of taking part in the Nazis’ annihilation of 6 million European Jews.

The legal reckoning with the Holocaust began early, even before the war ended, with the Soviet trials of perpetrators of mass murder in Krasnodar and Kharkov in 1943.…  Seguir leyendo »

El pasado nazi que algunas dinastías empresariales no quieren reconocer

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La columna vertebral de la economía alemana actual es la industria automotriz. Esto no solo se debe a que representa alrededor del 10 por ciento del PIB; marcas como Porsche, Mercedes, BMW y Volkswagen son reconocidas en todo el mundo como símbolos del ingenio y la excelencia de Alemania en el sector industrial. Estas empresas invierten millones en mercadotecnia y publicidad para sustentar esa imagen. Invierten menos dinero y energía en hablar sobre sus orígenes.

El éxito de estas corporaciones se remonta directamente a los nazis: Ferdinand Porsche convenció a Hitler de poner en marcha las operaciones de Volkswagen. Su hijo, Ferry Porsche, quien hizo crecer a la empresa, se ofreció voluntariamente como oficial de las SS.…  Seguir leyendo »

Defendant Josef Schütz gets help from his lawyer to hide his face as he arrives for his trial in Brandenburg an der Havel, northeastern Germany, on October 7, 2021. The 100-year-old former concentration camp guard is the oldest person yet to be tried for Nazi-era crimes. © Tobias Schwarz / AFP

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A 100-year-old man is on trial in Germany this month. The man, who has not been named due to German privacy laws, is charged with “knowingly and willingly” assisting in the of murder of 3,518 people as a former SS guard at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

He is far from the only elderly defendant to face trial now for crimes committed during the Nazi period. The trial of Irmgard Furchner, 96, a former secretary at Stutthof concentration camp, was to begin last month, but was briefly delayed after Furchner fled from her care home.

Among other recent cases are John Demjanjuk, 89, in 2009; Oscar Gröning, 93, the so-called “accountant of Auschwitz”, in 2015; Johann Rehbogen, 93, in 2018 (his case was later dropped because he was deemed “permanently unfit for trial”); and Bruno Dey, 93, in 2019.…  Seguir leyendo »

Germany faced its horrible past. Can we do the same?

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Shortly after the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in 2016 on the National Mall, I was speaking to some patrons of a successful nonprofit about the importance of candid racial dialogue in politics and in the places we live, work and worship.

One of the participants had recently toured the museum and had a pointed question. Why, she wondered, were all the exhibits that visitors first encounter dedicated to slavery? Among other things, she was referring to a reconstructed cabin built by former slaves from Maryland and a statue of Thomas Jefferson next to a wall with the names of more than 600 people he owned.…  Seguir leyendo »

Brandenburg Gate in Berlin last year on the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day. Credit Markus Schreiber/Associated Press

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Victory in Europe Day, the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s military capitulation to the Allies on May 8, 1945, is an occasion of unreserved celebration across much of the continent, observed with colorful parades and national holidays. For Germans, it is understandably fraught.

For a long time, the anniversary was largely defined in Germany by ambivalence. How, after all, could the vanquished celebrate their surrender? Now Germans are increasingly grappling with a thornier question: How could they not?

Over recent decades, it has become an ever more common convention in Germany to commemorate May 8 as a day of “liberation.” Germany, the thinking goes, was saved from the evils of Nazism, and therefore Germans, too, ought to rejoice.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Este lugar, sus torres de vigilantes, sus cámaras de gas, sus barracones, todo es testimonio de lo que no puede volver a suceder y es importante preservarlo para que las nuevas generaciones puedan visitarlo y conocer la barbarie que aquí tuvo lugar”. Son palabras de Ángela Merkel, pronunciadas, hace tan solo unos días, en el campo alemán de exterminio de Auschwitz-Birkenau. Con ellas, la canciller alemana se asomaba —quién sabe si por última vez en público— al inabarcable precipicio europeo del siglo XX: el Holocausto nazi.

Nunca un discurso de esta naturaleza tuvo antes un significado tan alto como el que ha alcanzado en esta ocasión.…  Seguir leyendo »

Right-wing activists shout slogans as they gather in Berlin before marching through the city center in 2016. Credit Carsten Koall/Getty Images

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The reunification of Germany, in 1990, was a moment of exalted pride for the postwar federal republic. After decades of warning that a united country would resurrect the horrors of the 20th century, its neighbors and allies, many of them former battlefield foes, came around to accept and even welcome it. That’s in large part because, during those same decades, West Germany had undertaken a self-administered “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” a mouthful of a German word that translates as something like “the overcoming of the past,” and refers to the country’s collective effort to grapple with the causes and legacies of the Nazi era.…  Seguir leyendo »

Manifestantes de derecha reunidos en Chemnitz, Alemania, después del presunto asesinato de un hombre alemán a manos de refugiados. Credit Sean Gallup/Getty Images

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Gran parte del mundo pareció sorprenderse por los disturbios que surgieron en Alemania a finales del mes pasado, cuando miles de simpatizantes nazis y neonazis salieron a las calles de Chemnitz a cazar inmigrantes, sin que la policía pudiera hacer casi nada para detenerlos.

Mientras tanto, el apoyo para el nuevo partido alemán de extrema derecha, Alternativa para Alemania (AfD, por su sigla en alemán) ha seguido en aumento: en una encuesta realizada después de las revueltas en Chemnitz, la AfD superó a los socialdemócratas alemanes para convertirse en el segundo partido más popular en el país. AfD dice luchar contra la “cultura de la memoria” en Alemania y hace un llamado a favor de dejar de disculparse por el pasado.…  Seguir leyendo »

A sign depicting Bjöern Höecke, a leader of the Alternative for Germany party, with the slogan “Never again” after a protest against the party in Cologne in April. Ralph Orlowski/Reuters

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To many Germans, the violence in Charlottesville, Va., this month and the American president’s reaction to it came as a shock. Even those who have come to expect little of Donald Trump — he’s a uniquely unpopular figure among Germans — were aghast. “It’s racist, far-right violence, and that requires determined and forceful resistance no matter where in the world it appears,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

What a strange moment, when the German chancellor lectures the American president on how to deal with neo-Nazis. But it’s also an instructive one, in that it highlights how the two countries deal with extremism.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Seventy years after the Nuremberg trials, something truly extraordinary happened in a German courtroom last week. Reinhold Hanning, a 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard who will go down in history as one of the last of Hitler’s perpetrators to be charged for his role in the Third Reich, offered an apology.

Hanning declared he was “sincerely sorry” and “ashamed” that he had belonged to a criminal organization that committed mass murder and countless atrocities, and that he had never done anything to prevent such actions.

In today's world, that hardly sounds like a startling admission. But it is almost unprecedented for those who have been charged with carrying out the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes since the end of World War Two.…  Seguir leyendo »

Why Old Nazis Are Still Useful

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The trial of Oskar Gröning, the 93-year-old “accountant of Auschwitz,” began last week in the German city of Lüneburg. Mr. Gröning is charged with complicity in the murder of at least 300,000 people. At least once during the summer of 1944, according to his accusers, when thousands of Hungarian Jews arrived by cattle car at Auschwitz-Birkenau, he stood at the exit ramp, watching as the passengers were divided into those to be put into forced labor and those to be killed instantly.

The trial has gained widespread attention in Germany and around the world, and not only because Mr. Gröning expressed regret for his actions.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

Germany is once again passing through the wringer of its past. At issue this time are not the deeds but the words of Adolf Hitler and the planned republication of his infamous manifesto-as-autobiography, “Mein Kampf,” a book that has been officially suppressed in the country since the end of World War II.

But while the prospect of the Führer’s words circulating freely on the German market may shock some, it shouldn’t. The inoculation of a younger generation against the Nazi bacillus is better served by open confrontation with Hitler’s words than by keeping his reviled tract in the shadows of illegality.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Ha vuelto ha generado desde su publicación en Alemania en noviembre de 2012 un notable revuelo, ha vendido algo más de medio millón de ejemplares y ha sido portada de docenas de revistas y de suplementos culturales incapaces de ocultar su entusiasmo por esta sátira acerca de la sociedad alemana actual en la que Adolf Hitler aparece en un solar abandonado en las proximidades de la antigua Cancillería y se transforma, mediante una suma de candor y cálculo, en estrella televisiva con partido político propio.

Aunque su propio autor ha admitido haberse sentido sorprendido por el éxito de Ha vuelto, éste parece fácilmente explicable (y predecible) en un país profundamente interesado en su pasado nacionalsocialista y, en particular, en la figura de Hitler, de la que los alemanes nunca parecen tener suficiente.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

It is a week in which Germany’s history has seemed inescapable. Yesterday, the German president Joachim Gauck became his country’s first head of state to visit Oradour-sur-Glane, the perfectly preserved French village where, in June 1944, 642 men, women and children were massacred by a Waffen-SS company. On Tuesday, German federal authorities announced that 30 men and women alleged to have acted as guards at the Auschwitz death camp should face prosecution. And at the start of the week, former SS officer Siert Bruins went on trial at a court in Hagen, western Germany, accused of murdering a Dutch resistance fighter while serving with a German border patrol.…  Seguir leyendo »

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El día 9 de noviembre hace 20 años, la caída del Muro y la consiguiente unificación del país fue un acontecimiento de gran calado simbólico que escenificaba el definitivo fin del tan debatido Sonderweg (camino particular) alemán en la historia contemporánea, cuyas contradicciones habían desembocado en el nacionalsocialismo, la guerra, el Holocausto y la partición.

Sin embargo, 20 años de la tan ansiada normalidad no han borrado los horrores del pasado. Al contrario, la guerra, la dictadura y Auschwitz siguen presentes en la cultura política del país, y esto hasta unos límites que para observadores no alemanes a veces pueden rayar en lo ridículo.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Cuando en la noche del 20 de julio de 1944 Claus von Stauffenberg fue fusilado en el patio del cuartel berlinés de Bendleerstrasse, Alemania perdió su última oportunidad de eliminar a Hitler y de propiciar una rendición pactada con el mando aliado. En los casi cinco años desde el inicio de la II Guerra Mundial, Alemania había sufrido 2,8 millones de muertos, y en los restantes 10 meses de contienda, hasta mayo de 1945, los muertos alemanes fueron 4,8 millones. Stauffenberg estuvo muy cerca de lograr evitar el sufrimiento de millones de personas. Su fallida gesta podría haber cambiado el destino de Europa en los 45 años siguientes, hasta la caída del Muro.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Kristallnacht, Noche de los Cristales, es el término con el que ha pasado a la historia el pogromo antisemita organizado por el régimen nazi en la noche del 9 al 10 de noviembre de 1938. La destrucción de cientos de sinagogas, saqueos, asesinatos y decenas de miles de arrestos y traslados a campos de concentración conforman el fatal balance de las acciones que tuvieron lugar en Alemania y Austria hace 70 años, y que dan comienzo al periodo hoy definido como el Holocausto.

En noviembre de 1938 España atraviesa la última etapa de la Guerra Civil, que se va definiendo de manera ya prácticamente irreversible a favor del bando nacional.…  Seguir leyendo »