As I drive along I do a lot of thinking. As I left Nuremberg I couldn’t help but wonder whether posting a selfie ‘standing where Hitler stood’ was appropriate. I don’t normally share thoughts or feelings on Facebook, I usually leave that level of embarrassment to others but here are some thoughts on Nuremberg and our world. I had been there briefly once before but only in the city centre and so missed all of the 20th century stuff. It’s a beautiful city, not original but quite tastefully restored to a semblance of what it was like before the USAF and RAF did their work in WWII. There’s an acknowledgement of the city’s part in the events leading up to the war with the Nazi Party Rallies from 1927-39; and, there’s a very good presentation of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in the actual building. But I still feel unease at being a tourist in all this. Great wickedness began in Nuremberg. In 1935 the conclusion of the Party Congress was a special session of the Reichstag where the ‘Nuremberg Laws’ were passed which were in effect the basis for everything else which followed for the Jewish people. The first was ‘The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour’, and the second was ‘The Reich Citizenship Law’; both of which combined outlawed the involvement of Jewish people in the life of the nation, both socially and politically. Who are these people in our midst, are they really a part of us? Questions like this are still asked today: How can we control immigration? How could these radicals grow up in our country and still want to go off and fight in someone else’s war? What if No wins, should the English living here really have a vote, there are 100,000 of them! Will all these Commonwealth athletes go home after the Games? Now we’re nowhere near herding people into gas chambers but aren’t the attitudes ever so slightly similar? When Scottish people went off to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s were they any different from young Scottish Muslims who go off to Syria today? And of course Hitler was elected, 44% of the popular vote; which European politician wouldn’t sell his granny for such a share today? 50% one way or the other on September 18th isn’t an assertion of right over wrong, it’s a political choice. Excuse me if this seems like a rant but with the enormity of the holocaust in my mind the other questions take on a different perspective. The only way we can encounter difference is with humility and not fear or superiority. When we reflect on the holocaust it’s as well to remember that the beautiful Frauenkirche in Nuremberg was built on the site of the Synagogue in the ghetto which had been swept away to build what is the marketplace to this day, hundreds of Jews lost their lives. The holocaust didn’t just come out of the blue.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 20:40:36 +0000
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