Friday, September 22, 2006

Neo-nazis enter state assembly, Germany

Der Spiegel is writing about it ...

While it's common knowledge that the neo-nazis are gaining ground in many countries throughout Europe, the extreme right have now entered the German state assembly, with far-right parties now represented in three of eastern Germany's five state parliaments.

Some of their stated intentions include trying to and repatriate foreigners and a desire that Germany should stop atoning for the Holocaust

Oddly enough, the nazis they model themselves might wince and look at the ground over this news ...

It made me think of an extract I found in The Women Who Wrote the War - where the journalists talk about how they found Germany at the end of World War II.

Sigrid Schultz 'had left a German of prideful Nazis; she returned to find people denying their affiliation, soft-pedaling their allegiance. Even in Nuremberg, once home to the Nazi Party congresses, this was so ...

But there as in all the once important Nazi towns she visited, Schultz heard the same refrain: "We are the little people. We had nothing to say in Germany."

Virtually all the correspondents following the victorious Allied troops encountered the same national denial. "No one is a Nazi. No one ever was."

Martha Gellhorn, travelling with a regiment of the 82nd Airborne, wrote in prose laced with sarcasm. "To see a whole nation passing the buck is not an enlightening spectacle ..."


How times have changed. The extreme right neo nazi is loud, proud and gaining votes.

3 comments:

paris parfait said...

Martha Gelhorn was a firebrand!Too bad there aren't more like her out there reporting these days.

paris parfait said...

Oh and I forgot to say about Germany - that's just alarming and my German friends share the alarm.

Di Mackey said...

I'm glad Germans are alarmed paris parfait. It's the same here in Antwerpen, where the neo nazis are in the ascendency. The truth will out on Oct 8th.

Martha Gellhorn ... you'll love the book I found the quote in. It gives nice insights into the lives of those women.