# What do present day Germans think about the Holocaust? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 26, 2012, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413 "2012-07-26T03:26:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/21 "2012-07-27T03:16:51Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > That’s pretty useful and clever actually. The blood type test is quite easy now, but yes, then it was. On the shoulder, in case the arm was blown off. ---
**Author:** ![Enuma\_Elish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5e9695/32.png) [@Enuma\_Elish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enuma_Elish)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/22 "2012-07-27T03:33:06Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The Waffen SS had their blood type tattooed on their shoulder. Perhaps that is what the physician saw. Please tell me you are kidding. I’m already having thoughts (and I admit that the possibility is probably quite remote and I’m just being paranoid and meshugge - and , yes I used the term ‘meshugge’ for effect, but I grew up hearing words like that, but was told they were low-German and was yelled at when I asked if they were Yiddish) that my Grandma’s cousins may have been involved in certain things pertaining to Jewish people in Germany in the 1940’s and my Great Grandma’s family may have possibly, remotely possibly, been Jewish . . . . ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/23 "2012-07-27T03:46:48Z")
> [@Enuma\_Elish](#): > > Please tell me you are kidding. I’m already having thoughts (and I admit that the possibility is probably quite remote and I’m just being paranoid and meshugge - and , yes I used the term ‘meshugge’ for effect, but I grew up hearing words like that, but was told they were low-German and was yelled at when I asked if they were Yiddish) that my Grandma’s cousins may have been involved in certain things pertaining to Jewish people in Germany in the 1940’s and my Great Grandma’s family may have possibly, remotely possibly, been Jewish . . . . You lost me on that. Yiddish is said to be a German dialect, and my small experience with Germans and Belgians is that they are really easy to piss off about dialect. Here is a[wikipedia link](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_blood_group_tattoo) about SS blood type tattoos. Do you think you have relatives who were SS? ---
**Author:** ![Enuma\_Elish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5e9695/32.png) [@Enuma\_Elish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enuma_Elish)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/24 "2012-07-27T04:03:36Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > You lost me on that. > Yiddish is said to be a German dialect, and my small experience with Germans and Belgians is that they are really easy to piss off about dialect. > > Here is a[wikipedia link](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_blood_group_tattoo) about SS blood type tattoos. > > Do you think you have relatives who were SS? I think I may have had relatives who were SS. I also think I may have had other relatives who were Jewish. I don’t care if I had Jewish relatives. I’m OK with that. I would be quite upset if I found out I had relatives who were in the SS. ---
**Author:** ![D-bear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@D-bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D-bear)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/25 "2012-07-27T04:55:21Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > When I was young and traveling through Europe, I visited Bavaria. When I mentioned to my German friends my plans to visit Dachau concentration camp near Munich, they kind-of snickered at me. They asked why I wanted to see that. It was like they were tired of being punished over again for something that happened long before they were born. One of them said they “would like to forget it ever happened”. > > “ **THAT** is why I thought it was important for me to see it”, is what I told him, so that none of us would ever forget. > > IMHO the Germans should not be punished for what occured in the past, but I do think a gentle reminder about it is in order once in a while, certainly given current social trends, so that it never happens again. I don’t think it’s about being German, Bosnian, Serbian, Shi’a, or Sunni. It’s about being Human. We are all Human and the capacity to hate one another is infinite. We need to see examples of atrocities to help us prevent future atrocities. We can not forget the mistakes of the past or they will become the genocides of the future. So many Americans feel disgust at what the Germans did to the Jews, but fail to feel ashamed that we gave the Native Americans blankets laced with smallpox. Man needs to stop killing man. End of story. ---
**Author:** ![Pitchmeister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pitchmeister/32/3459_2.png) [@Pitchmeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pitchmeister)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/26 "2012-07-27T09:57:25Z")
Speaking as a German, the memory of WWII and the Holocaust is always present and schools go to great lengths to teach about it. Any sort of comparison to that time is strictly taboo, and politician’s careers end when they say stuff like: “The recent economic climate reminds me of the end of the Weimar Republic.” Unfortunately, many younger people now (I’m talking teenagers) seem to be woefully uninformed about both the Nazi era and the GDR, which is probably due to the fact that there are very few people alive any more who were personally affected (by the Nazis, that is). Some people do feel jaded about the topic, but the experience that **snowthx** had is not typical, IMHO. I have never heard anyone say “I wish I could forget this ever happened.” BTW, I disagree with the notion that immigrants take on all of the history of their new home - I would think it weird if a Turkish person (to say nothing of Polish immigrants) somehow expressed some sort of personal responsibility for the Horrors of that time. It is part of our cultural heritage, but I believe the connection is more direct when your ancestors were directly responsible. So I could definitely understand a Swedish immigrant to the US in the early 1900s not feeling connected to the atrocities done to the Indians in the 17th and 18th century. ---
**Author:** ![\_Undecided\_Adrian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/_/eada6e/32.png) [@\_Undecided\_Adrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/_Undecided_Adrian)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/27 "2012-07-27T10:07:17Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > When I was young and traveling through Europe, I visited Bavaria. When I mentioned to my German friends my plans to visit Dachau concentration camp near Munich, they kind-of snickered at me. They asked why I wanted to see that. It was like they were tired of being punished over again for something that happened long before they were born. One of them said they “would like to forget it ever happened”. > > “ **THAT** is why I thought it was important for me to see it”, is what I told him, so that none of us would ever forget. > > IMHO the Germans should not be punished for what occured in the past, but I do think a gentle reminder about it is in order once in a while, certainly given current social trends, so that it never happens again. The desire to forget is not that common in Germany. There are memorials not just at the concentration camps, but all over. There is an ongoing effort to install little plaques in front of each house from which someone was deported, for example. I don’t know when you were here, but we’re more open about the past now than ever before, IMHO. And the current social trend is not at all towards right-wing extremism. There are some parties with Neo-Nazi sympathies, but they are extremely marginalised, and even the protest votes from general political dissatisfaction and the Euro crisis goes elsewhere, like the Pirate Party. Modern Germany is one of the countries you have to worry about the least, in fact. Pacifism is widespread, and the US had to urge us to even get our military help in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Our relationship to our neighbours is good, the one with France for decades now, and with Poland it rapidly improved after they recognized their concerns after our reunification were unfounded. And the European financial crisis is not going to change that. There is some xenophobia, but IMHO it’s nothing against some reactions in the US about Mexicans and Muslims. I’m all for the “never again” mentality, but it should mainly be directed to places like Bosnia, Ruanda, and nowadays Darfur and Syria, not a peaceful and stable democracy. Not blindly following your own government into pointless wars like in Vietnam and Iraq and stopping extralegal renditions and Guantanamo might be a good place to start, as well. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/28 "2012-07-27T10:26:58Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > When I was young and traveling through Europe, I visited Bavaria. When I mentioned to my German friends my plans to visit Dachau concentration camp near Munich, they kind-of snickered at me. They asked why I wanted to see that. It was like they were tired of being punished over again for something that happened long before they were born. One of them said they “would like to forget it ever happened”. Reminds me of a scene in the German film [The Wave](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_(2008_film)). A schoolteacher starts a lesson about the Nazis and the reaction from the pupils is along the lines of “not again, we get this all the time, we were born several decades after it”. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/29 "2012-07-27T11:08:03Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > I don’t think it matters _that_ much whether your personal genetic ancestry was represented in the area at the time; if you live here, you have assumed some inheritance of everything that came before. Why should a 21st century black Jamacian immigrant to the USA inherit any of the responsibility for harm caused by white Americans in the USA in the 19th century? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/30 "2012-07-27T11:38:22Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > Why should a 21st century black Jamacian immigrant to the USA inherit any of the responsibility for harm caused by white Americans in the USA in the 19th century? Because discrimination is still present. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/31 "2012-07-27T11:52:21Z")
What does it imply to assume some inheritance of everything that came before? What does it imply to inherit responsibility for harm caused by other people? ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/32 "2012-07-27T12:32:03Z")
> [@'\[Undecided](#): > > Adrian;15318235’]I’m all for the “never again” mentality, but it should mainly be directed to places like Bosnia, Ruanda, and nowadays Darfur and Syria, not a peaceful and stable democracy. Not blindly following your own government into pointless wars like in Vietnam and Iraq and stopping extralegal renditions and Guantanamo might be a good place to start, as well. The US? You forgot to mention the detainment of our own citizens of a specific descent and confiscation of their proprty. I tend to think, at least in the current political climate, that acknowledging past misdeeds would be seen as “apologizing”, and we will have none of that here - we _never_ make mistakes in the US. Yes, I agree. I should not have limited my comment to just Germany. My experience may have been atypical, but it did happen (early 90s). A lot of countries have blood on their hands and need the reminder. But, the big question, how does humanity prevent genocide? It continues to happen even in the recent decade. I think the human capacity for doing good is far outpaced by our capacity for cruelty and evil - maybe it is just part of our nature. One can hope we will eventually find an answer. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/33 "2012-07-27T20:00:38Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Because discrimination is still present. Only on an individual level and thus only individuals have the burden of guilt. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/34 "2012-07-27T20:03:11Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Only on an individual level and thus only individuals have the burden of guilt. True. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/35 "2012-07-27T20:40:50Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Well unlike the Southrons, the Germans haven’t engaged in obssessive whitewashing, nostalgia, apologism, and revisionism of their past. This was worse in the South in the '20s and '30s which is about how far we are removed from World War II. “Southrons”? Why on Earth would you use that word? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/36 "2012-07-27T21:03:22Z")
The Holocaust Museum (Jewish Holocaust Museum, actually) in Berlin is right by the Brandenburg Gate, perhaps the most central part of the city. The Germans are obsessive about keeping it clean of graffiti. Contrast that to the location of the Bunker and where Hitler’s body was burned. That is also close, but has a tiny sign, and only a not well kept up patch of scraggly weeds. The Museum itself is even better done than the one in Washington, and really concentrates on the people, not just a higher level view of the events. At a more personal level, I was on a mostly European mailing list back during the Bosnian/Serbian War. Though this was not a political list at all, a discussion about it broke out, and a German member was the most vociferous opponent of the Serbian atrocities - for which he too a lot of heat from a Serbian member. I was very impressed - the German member really cared. There are obviously wackos still, but for the most part the lesson seems to have been learned. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/37 "2012-07-27T21:37:49Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > “Southrons”? Why on Earth would you use that word? Just personal idiosyncracy. ---
**Author:** ![nogravity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@nogravity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nogravity)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/38 "2012-07-27T21:47:18Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > You can’t sign into a quiet English hotel without someone mentioning the war. [You think.](http://youtu.be/7xnNhzgcWTk) ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/39 "2012-07-27T21:47:48Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Just personal idiosyncracy. By which you mean a deliberate choice to impede communication by using idiosyncratic words that draw the reader’s attention to themselves while adding absolutely nothing to the meaning of your sentence? I’m being enormously hypocritical to point this out, of course, but I’m comfortable with that. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413/40 "2012-07-27T21:49:42Z")
My grandfather was a nazi of unknown to me rank, I don’t really consider myself a German though(I was raised in the US). Among my mom’s side WW2 was just looked at as madness, I think it is easy to forget most nazis and German soldiers were drafted and participation in Hitler Youth for children of the right age was mandatory. I think you get into morally grey areas fast when the alternative to saluting Hitler is prison or execution. Why anyone would feel personally responsible is beyond me. Odd side bit, the way my mom and her family talk about WW2 is EXACTLY how WW2 vets would talk about it in the US, it took a long time before I realized how strange it was. Before that it was just meh the war, like in my young mind they morphed into the same boring thing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-present-day-germans-think-about-the-holocaust/629413.md?page=3)