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Post by Christian K on Feb 13, 2005 13:58:43 GMT -8
I don't care how out-of-place this is... Today, sixty years ago, the German city of Dresden was destroyed in what was one of the most devastating and most unnecessary air strikes of the Second World War. Officially, 35,000 people died, but with hundreds of thousands of refugees in the city during the bombing, and the incineration of unnumbered men, women and children, this number is too low. Even though I was born more than 35 years after the war, and don't have any connection to it, I am still deeply upset and sad about everything that happened then. The pointless death of so many people, the destruction of so many beautiful cities, the devastation of almost all of Europe... And to see all those f***ing Neo-Nazis these days, it makes me wanna scream. I do not feel any guilt for Second World War, but I do feel a very great responsibility not to let something like that happen ever again. Dresden stands as a monument of the terror of war and the perils of tyranny and fascism. May mankind never again fall from grace so deeply. Now, sixty years after the end of the war, the symbol of Dresden, the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) has been re-built, and although the bigger part of Dresden's once beautiful face is no more, to see this church standing again is a sign of hope and joy. And yet, after all, "who speaks of Dresden's grief may not be silent of German guilt." Christian
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Post by Pawel Stroinski on Feb 13, 2005 14:32:26 GMT -8
I live in Poland, which lost the most people in context of the population before (more people died in USSR, but that wasn't as devastating for their country). I'm not, to make that sure, feeling any contempt or hatred towards Germans today. That's very important, since I'm very well aware that nobody today (except those who are still alive) is guilty of what happened over 60 years ago.
I'm heavily interested, though, in how do the Germans (this generation, maybe the previous too) about what happened then. I've heard some very compelling story, e.g., about a German, who, after learning what his relative (grandfather I think) has done during the war, opened a refugee camp and something tells me there are more of those stories. Is it feeling-no-guilt-but-responsibility thinking?
There are some problems in communicating between Germans today and Poles, some still remember the war (and what Poles did to those Germans, who lived on the "new" terrain, ironically we keep calling "the recovered land"). What does stand behind Schroeder not approving Steinbach's initiative? The fact he thinks it is absurd or rather not wanting to have diplomatic problems?
As I said above, Kuehni, I DON'T have bad feelings about Germans, I've actually been to your country once and found the inhabitants very nice (and my German has improved a lot then ;D). Those informations interest me very much. When we want to have dialogue between the nationalities, we must not be afraid of "difficult" subjects.
And I am, too, sorry about Dresden. This was unnecessary. If anything should have been bombed at all in those sad times (or earlier), it should be the prison Hitler was kept in after the Munchen coup...
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Post by pmrsim on Feb 13, 2005 16:02:43 GMT -8
It's fantastic how Dresden has rebuilt itself. I visited the city for a week in 1994, when it was in the middle of re-construction. It struck me as a beautiful city (..well, at least for a large part of it).
Dresden is a testement BOTH to the terrors, the madness of war AND to the spirit of men to rebuilt society.
pete.
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Post by Pawel Stroinski on Feb 13, 2005 16:39:23 GMT -8
We should also look at the history of Dresden. I mean. What did the city mean in the past? What was it exactly? As far as I remember it was the Capitol of Saxen (Sachsen in German). And to note is the fact that two Saxon rulers (of the Wettin dynasty) were Polish kings. Not particularly good (a big crisis is associated with August III's ruledom and it was damn long ;D), but still.
Dresden was destroyed 60 years ago. By the Allies, which actually hurts more. Need to see the city some day. I would say, though, that some of the buildings should not be rebuilt as a token of what happened, to give reflection about the brutality and absurds of war.
For me the symbol (as a Pole, so I'm biased a bit) of the perils and human spirit is my capital Warsaw. Totally destroyed after the Warsaw Uprising, it was rebuilt (under Communist regime) years later. See, this is a symbol of some objectivity. On one hand we have Warsaw, destroyed by the Nazis, on the other - Dresden, heavily bombed (perhaps for the sake of the morale) by the Allies. Or a story like The Pianist - Jew saved by a German and betrayed by some Jews. When asking about the Nazi regime, we should also be aware, that there were people like Colonel von Stauffenberg (the famous Hitler assasination of July 20th, 1944), who deemed Hitler as a traitor of Germany. We must not forget who the Nazi were, but we can't generalize. Perhaps that was lost when Dresden's bombing was called upon...
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JohnHJohnson
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A Brit living in the US. Now I know how John Crichton felt in the Farscape Universe.
Posts: 75
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Post by JohnHJohnson on Feb 14, 2005 8:56:06 GMT -8
This comment could lead to others, especially those from the U.K. I could mention cities such as Coventry and London. I wish you hadn't started this up, as it could open a can of worms from both sides. Isn't it time to finally move on?
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Post by Christian K on Feb 14, 2005 12:51:04 GMT -8
This comment could lead to others, especially those from the U.K. I could mention cities such as Coventry and London. I wish you hadn't started this up, as it could open a can of worms from both sides. Isn't it time to finally move on? In my opinion, remembrance is not a bad thing. Whether it is remembering Coventry, London, Warsaw, Leningrad, my home-town Freiburg or Dresden these days. Many people these days speak about re-evaluating the past, but I think this is a very wrong thing to do. We Germans started it, and the terrible consequences of our actions (meaning what Germany got when the war returned to its origin) could have been no others. In this first total war, moral, ethics, rules of warfare etc. did not apply, and that explains quite a lot. Hitler was not a great statesman, he was a lunatic, in whose name and on whose orders millions of people were murdered. The devastation of German cities is not an equivalent of the Holocaust. Only if we remember the past we have a change of building a safer future. There you have it...I sound like George W. Bush. As for moving on...tell that to the Daily Mirror, The Sun etc. Thanks for reading, Christian
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Post by Carlton the Barbarian on Feb 14, 2005 17:53:57 GMT -8
Yeah, but when people move on, they have a tendency to forget. I would never tell the inhabitants of Nagasaki to forget out the war, even though remembering kind of obstructs the healing process. It seems like people today are too removed from history, so people need to remember that Europe (and several other places) layed in utter ruin after WW2. Although Bush has quoted FDR, I seriously doubt if he (and others) has read most of what the man had said, or if he actually visited the impressive FDR Memorial in his home town, DC. There is nothing wrong with remembering the past. Are you going to tell Jewish people, Japenese, Veterans, etc, to "move on" after what happened in the War
People are still deeply affected by what happened in WW2, and people are still deeply moved (to tears) and hurt by that War. Visit any WW2 monument, and you'll see this. People in my country are still obsessing about the Vietnam War. Is it time for them to move on? You should check out this movie, Fog of War (score by Philip Glass). How does that quote from 1984 go...
-Carlton
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Jon Lord
Ghostwriter
Calvinism and Hobbes
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Post by Jon Lord on Feb 14, 2005 19:08:57 GMT -8
On the subject of war horrors, has anyone here heard of the long, drawn out war after the Spanish/American war between the Philippines and the United States? More Americans died in the Philippine-American War than in the American Revolution or the War of 1812 and total Filipino combat deaths reached 20,000. War, disease and starvation killed over 200,000 civilians. Horrible atrocities were committed by the Americans, who basically just replaced the Spanish as colonial occupiers. Sad stuff.
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JohnHJohnson
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A Brit living in the US. Now I know how John Crichton felt in the Farscape Universe.
Posts: 75
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Post by JohnHJohnson on Feb 15, 2005 11:44:24 GMT -8
As for moving on...tell that to the Daily Mirror, The Sun etc. Thanks for reading, Christian sorry mate, don't read U.K. rags.
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Post by Pawel Stroinski on Feb 16, 2005 12:54:58 GMT -8
Kuehni said exactly what I meant. We have to remember all what happened not only to build safer future, but also to build a better bond between nations. Any nation. We must remember, forgive and understand each other.
What happened during the Holocaust is a shock to everybody concerned, not really because of the very amount of the victims, but because it happened at all. The orders given, the documents, all the leftovers. It did happen. And we all have to deal with it.
The problem is that we all have to disconnect the Nazis with ALL Germans, which is a painful stereotypes, perhaps built into Poles too. But then we forget about people like aforementioned Stauffenberg or Wilm Hosenfeld. But how to speak of these problems?
First, we need to see the very center of the problem. Basing it on Polish/German relationship. Poles still blame Germans for the II World War, for the destruction of Warsaw, Holocaust, etc. Germans hate Poles for accepting the Curzon line and taking the land we took. And for telling the Germans who lived there to get out (e.g. Erika Steinbach, who was one of the Germans thrown out of Poland as I read, she was an infant then). Poles don't speak loudly of the problems about the war and generally start acknowledging perhaps that not all Germans WERE and ARE Nazis. All anti-Polish (stated publicly) initiatives are cut down by the Schroeder administration by simply reminding the initiators who really started all this. Here we have a good place to communicate.
I had this idea for a story. A German visits Poland. He lives by one family in the South-East and one day, he decides to visit the famous Auschwitz museum. He returns shocked by the info that his relative was one of the oppresors and that this person is responsible for the death of relatives of his hosts. Now he tries to cope with that and talk to them about what happened. Good idea for a character-driven drama with some advice how to really talk about those very difficult times. I think, what he feels is more than responsibility, he feels guilty, which is too much here, just because it was his relative NOT himself.
The story of the refugee camp I given above was compelling for me and for everybody. It is we who are responsible for not repeating of the war. It is our generation (I mean people born in the 80s) which is responsible for creating new values with which humanity must enter the new Millenium. Maybe it's hard to do, but it must be done. We were given at least three tragic events in last five years which actually unified people of all nations and races. First it was 9/11, then the famed Bam earthquake in 2003 and the last Christmas's tsunami. We shall also not forget about the Madrid attacks last year. That's what we should remember. Also children murdered in Bieslan.
Also when we look at the war we MUST not forget the genocides of the Soviets. Polish policemen murdered in Katin is one of the situations that is known very well. But perhaps largely unknown that there was a German Autonomic Republic in the USSR. When Fall Barbarossa commenced, Stalin ordered cleansing of that republic... We shall also not forget that.
What I've written is very long, might be maybe controversial, but what I wanted to say that nothing should be forgotten, but we must forgive. Not the wrongdoers. But we cannot blame the next generations for what happened 6 decades earlier. We must look for new values, too.
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Post by christopher on Feb 16, 2005 17:02:52 GMT -8
May I just say that I really enjoyed reading all of this. I agree that these sort of things should be remember, even when that's not pleasant (have any of you been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.?--case in point). I'm glad to see that Dresden is doing so well. I'd like to thank Christian Kuhn for starting this topic, and applaud all that he has said--I think things like this should be discussed more often --Chris
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