Nazismo (Continuación)

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, too!…  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 Heinrich Böll and Uwe Johnson, he represented a German cultural rebirth, escaping the mediocrity of the early postwar years and reflecting caustically but subtly on the country’s recent past.…  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 aim at their targets.…  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, maneras de delincuente.…  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 the end, there can only be a dread silence -- a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God.…  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: "I am here as a son of the German people."…  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. There is, moreover, no more civilised and tolerant nation than postwar Germany.…  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 Kristof, who in July 1944 was involved in the killing of an antifascist resistance leader, Endre Sagvari.…  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 de los edificios que bordean ambas orillas de la calle e incluso que están algo más alejados, como la ampliación del Palacio Real que da a la Maximilian Platz y a la Maximiliam Strasse, recuerdan claramente construcciones de Florencia o de Roma.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Ana R. Cañil, periodista (EL PERIODICO, 04/05/04):

Jessica Mitford se fugó de su aristocrática casa inglesa para venir a España, con su primo y luego marido, Esmond Romilly, a luchar por la república. Corría febrero de 1937 y la prensa británica se hacía eco de la aventura de la penúltima de las seis hermanas Mitford, con el título La hija de un par huye con su amante a España. El par era lord Redesdale, miembro de una de las familias del más rancio abolengo británico. El amante, el joven veinteañero y aventurero Esmond, era sobrino de Winston Churchill. Su futura esposa, Jessica, sólo era prima de Churchill.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Claudio Magris, escritor italiano (EL PAÍS, 15/03/03):

Es raro encontrar el mal puro, absoluto y gratuito, no impregnado de esas reservas de humanidad que están presentes en casi todas las acciones de los hombres, incluso en las más terribles. El gesto del asesino más abyecto y cruel se mezcla a menudo con sentimientos, miedos, debilidades, contradicciones, coincidencias, casualidades que desde luego no disminuyen su culpa ni la apartan de la necesidad de la condena y del castigo, pero la entrecruzan con la incertidumbre, la ambigüedad de la condena humana. El Mal con mayúsculas ejerce a menudo una seducción chabacana: como un culebrón en tecnicolor, parece más interesante, pero en realidad es mucho más banal y retórico que el bien, que, en cambio, es más difícil y arriesgado, más complejo y sin prejuicios, y requiere valor, fantasía y originalidad.…  Seguir leyendo »