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As the Border Is Breached, Sobs of Dismay Mix With Tears of Joy : Germany: The Wall made a prison, but also helped keep the nation from setting off once again down the road of evil.

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<i> Rabbi Marvin Hier is dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center</i>

The day East Germany opened its borders, millions of people immediately recognized the historical significance of the decision. Among the many who shed tears were two I know.

One, a survivor of Auschwitz, was deeply distraught. “I hoped I would not live to see this day,” he lamented. Sobbing, he recalled what an earlier generation of Germans had done to his family at Auschwitz. To him, the existence of the Berlin Wall had somehow deterred today’s Germany from traveling down a similar road.

My friend the university student was so overjoyed at the sight of thousands of East Germans streaming across the wall that she could not hold back her tears. At long last, she said, their dreams of free movement were realized. Their prison doors had suddenly and unexpectedly swung open.

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Since then, few Western strategists have doubted that the unification of the two Germanys is inevitable. As the toppled leader of the East German Communist Party, Egon Krenz, put it, “Without the Communist Party, there is no German Democratic Republic.” The only real question, then, is when and under what conditions. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl urged fellow European Community leaders on Friday to approve the principle of German reunification at their summit on economic integration.

Many Western policy-makers agree with French President Francois Mitterrand: A unified Germany firmly anchored to the European Economic Community is a Germany they could live with. Add to that the demilitarization of both East and West Germany’s armed forces, and you have the current price for Western acquiescence to one German state.

There is, of course, a soft underbelly to such thinking: It places all our faith in the same external alliances that failed to neutralize German nationalism earlier this century. True, the Federal Republic is a democracy.

True, the rewards of the Common Market are a far stronger inducement for Germans to get along with their neighbors than the Treaty of Versailles was.

But the strength of the deutsche mark has never been a fundamental concern. The potential weakness of “deutsche memory” certainly is. The desire to remember must come from within. It cannot be flown in from Brussels.

West Germany’s acceptance of moral responsibility for its Nazi past, its enduring friendship with Israel and its policy of gutvidermachung (making good) and willingness to educate the young about the Holocaust are impressive. But we dare not gloss over a hidden, powerful undercurrent of German life.

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A 1986 survey asked Germans which of two statements they endorsed: “Attention must always be drawn to the Nazi past,” or “We don’t want to be reminded of the past again and again.” Sixty percent of the respondents chose the latter statement. Of that 60%, 81% agreed with another survey statement that Jews have much too much power in the world. Of the 40% who believed that attention to the Nazi past must not lapse, 19% felt that Jews were too powerful.

Then there is the bizarre behavior of the West German firms that evaded their government’s guidelines and gave Moammar Kadafi the capacity to manufacture chemical weapons.

Finally, there is the disturbing fact that East Germans grew up denying their past and learning to distrust Israel. Also, that some of the most notorious terrorist organizations in the world were allowed to train on East German soil.

History is unkind to those who stand in the way of the future. Perhaps all one can do is to point out to those rushing past that old man who wept when the Berlin Wall tumbled. He has been there before.

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