Germans = Nazis
Terribly odd article in the FT magazine on a journalists visit to Berchtesgaden, which was Hitler's HQ in the Alps for much of the war.The journalist, Angela Lambert, arrives in teh area and says, 'Here -- not for the first time -- I was astonished by people's sudden, unprovoked rudeness', of which she gives some examples, including rude shopkeepers, railway clerks etc.
From this she decides,
'I concluded that it would have been people like this who became early Nazis, willing collaborators in an authortarian, hierarchial society: led step by imperceptible step towards differentiation (of the mentally or physically handicapped, gypsies, homosexuals, jews), then 'begin' incarceration, merciful euthanasia and finally mass extermination"
And on the Final Solution,
'It's aftermath still shows. There were no signs of Jewish life here. I never saw a handicapped child or adult, all signs of the frailty of the human condition tidied away. Multiculturalism and ethnic mix have not reached Berchtesgaden and I didn't see a single black or Asian visitor, let alone resident'.
And so on..
'Most of course were welcoming people. So why was I haunted by the feeling that the little town's immaculate streets and prosperous citizens hid not just an appalling past but a troubling present? There were many who might still, in spite of everything that happened here, respond to a stirring and seductive call for the purification of the German race'
posted by Matthew @ 10/05/2003 06:21:00 PM
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