Dispute Over Past Leaves Germans Divided

Jewish community and German political leaders pledged Monday to preserve the terrifying memories of the Nazis’ Kristallnacht pogrom to ensure that reunited, postwar Germany never succumbs to hatred and intolerance.

But even on the solemn 60th anniversary of “The Night of Broken Glass” that foreshadowed the Holocaust, a bitter dispute about how much remembrance is too much punctured Germany’s effort to reconcile with its past.

Against the backdrop of next year’s return of the capital from Bonn to Berlin, the seat of Adolf Hitler’s power, Jewish leaders have expressed fears that a new government of politicians with no memories of World War II horrors is too eager to put the Nazi era behind it.

On the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, Hitler’s jackbooted storm troopers ransacked Jewish businesses and places of worship, smashing and burning hundreds of synagogues and killing at least 90 people. The rampage was the first signal of the Nazi atrocities that were to claim 6 million Jewish lives by 1945.

Broad social reflection on the Nazi era has been part of Germany’s landscape since the federal republic was founded on wartime ashes in 1949. But since reunification with the former East Germany eight years ago and the decision to relocate the capital here, some social analysts sense a desire to lighten the postwar atmosphere.

Attacks against foreign asylum-seekers along with neo-Nazi marches in the poorer, eastern regions of reunited Germany have sparked concern that right-wing extremism is again on the rise. Those fears were reinforced Monday when police discovered three small swastikas defacing a memorial to deported Berlin Jews and similar neo-Nazi graffiti sprayed on a wall in the northeastern city of Schwerin.

The new government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has come under fire for disputes and delays in planning for a national memorial dedicated to Holocaust victims.

The Schroeder government has described a proposed memorial, 10 years in the planning, as too grandiose and not fitting for Germany’s new capital. Plans call for a huge swath of central Berlin to be covered with 10-foot-high concrete slabs reminiscent of tombstones.

At a remembrance service Monday in a Berlin synagogue, German President Roman Herzog deemed Kristallnacht among “the worst and most shameful moments of our history,” while alluding to the growing controversy over the national memorial and over how the Holocaust should be presented to future generations.

“We should not forget for a second that our children and grandchildren have no idea anymore of what dictatorship, degradation and mass annihilation mean, how these horrors didn’t just coincidentally befall a people, and how it is therefore necessary to be vigilant to the small signs at the beginning,” Herzog told the more than 2,000 people in the synagogue.

But he also warned that “the right dosage” of historical instruction must be found, “or else there can also be a risk of blunting” awareness of the Holocaust.

Ignatz Bubis, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, spoke of the dangers of the country’s moving on from the disgrace of the Holocaust.

While he admonished German society in general for what he sees as attempts to diminish reflection on the Holocaust so that Germany can become a “normal” country, he focused his most bitter criticism on writer Martin Walser.

The winner of this year’s prestigious Frankfurt Book Fair peace prize, Walser, 71, stirred controversy a month ago when he said at his acceptance ceremony that Germans need not endlessly wallow in shame over Auschwitz.

“Intellectual nationalism is on the rise,” warned Bubis, reading long excerpts from Walser’s writings at the remembrance service. He accused those who seek to reduce Germany’s national consciousness of the Holocaust of “spiritual arson.”

Walser, who has written extensively on postwar German social trends, has told German media that his recent comments were misconstrued. Walser is critical of German passivity during the Nazi atrocities, but he appeared to be making a distinction between the wartime generation and the responsibilities of young Germans today.

Schroeder, who was sworn in as chancellor two weeks ago, maintained a quiet profile throughout the day of ceremonies, speeches and a rain-drenched march through Berlin.

He said in a statement on the eve of the anniversary that his strategy for preventing renewed social and ethnic tensions is to create jobs.

“Our task is to shape the present and the future so the past cannot repeat itself,” he said.

Volker Beck, a member of the Greens party with which Schroeder’s Social Democrats govern, urged the government to honor the memory of slain Jews by speeding up compensation for Nazi-era slave laborers who are still alive.