comment

Anyone who thinks folkish likes to imagine the history of his country as an uplifting succession of heroic events. There are defeats and victories, setbacks and achievements - all artfully woven motifs in a single carpet, 1000 years old and magnificent.

In this rug, the Holocaust is not just a stain. He is a burnt hole. You can see the bare ground underneath. It is not possible to mend or hide this hole. It is not possible to ignore this hole. Auschwitz is . Whoever is human can not forget this crime of humanity.

The memory of the Shoah is built into our community as a mainstay. Immediately in the first sentence of the Basic Law, which is based on Immanuel Kant as well as on Auschwitz: "The dignity of man is inviolable".

Selfie with the bad past

The memory of Auschwitz is always political. How can she be kept alive when the last survivors have died? Can memory ever be kept alive? How can the terrible be made educationally fruitful? What should be done so that "it" does not repeat itself, neither here nor elsewhere? How do we resist the beginnings? These questions concern the concern of a society that does not want to forget Auschwitz and draw lessons from it.

It may be that the memory is frozen in rituals. Then modern Germany takes a selfie of itself, with the bad, but "mastered" past in the background.

Again in parliaments the representatives of the victims, eloquent survivors or clever female professors will talk - the next-born into the conscience. Afterwards there is a sad sonata on the violin and wreaths for the graves. It may be that shame on the act and pride on their "coping" coincide - or "never again Auschwitz!" become the slogan for military interventions.

What is new is that during these speeches some representatives of the people demonstratively leave the room - as was the case last time when Charlotte Knobloch spoke to the Bavarian state parliament. What is new is that people's representatives are "not welcome" for the ritualised wreath-laying ceremony - like AFD members in Buchenwald.

What is new is that politicians openly put their humanity and reason back in favor of other goals.

Can not be reached by memorial lessons

For such people, the Holocaust is, on the one hand, a worldwide conspiracy with the aim of weakening resistance to global capitalism hallucinating as Jewish. So you doubt that he has taken place.

On the other hand, Auschwitz is for her exactly what it would take "once again" or even once to break the hallucinated as Jewish global capitalism. They want the Holocaust to happen again.

Anyone who thinks this way can not be reached by commemoration lessons, not by scientific proof or pedagogy. If you think so, the hole in the carpet is as annoying as the compelling doctrines are. He does not want to know any better. He would like to have his hands free. He would like, as the Austrian Minister of the Interior Herbert Kickl (FPÖ), to reverse the primacy of law over politics.

Therefore, in this country, the representatives of a "fermenting party" (Alexander Gauland) like to aim to relativize the event. To make it smaller, more manageable. Therefore, they explain the burning hole to the "bird's shit". Therefore they complain of an alleged "blame cult", demand "honor our Wehrmacht soldier". Or, like Björn Höcke, a "remembrance policy turnaround 180 degrees".

If you turn 180 degrees, you turn away.

He does this in order to be able to devote himself to problems with others , whereby "human hardships and unsightly scenes can not always be avoided" (Björn Höcke). The main thing is that we will remain decent.

Such an authoritarian turnaround can be observed in democracies all over the world, from the USA to Brazil and Hungary. It is a longing for penetration , unencumbered by lessons of the past or ideals like the "dignity of man". How vulnerable and "palpable" is this dignity has been demonstrated by the Holocaust.

If we do not already learn from Auschwitz, then maybe from studying in Auschwitz. Ethos and morality and "politics of remembrance" alone will not protect us against totalitarianism, anti-Semitism and racism.

Auschwitz does not help to prevent Auschwitz. It takes more.

Auschwitz is. The burn hole remains.