Amid worries of a Nazi revival in Europe and protests from Russia, former wartime
allies of Germany united to re-enact a WW2 mission. Soldiers
and reservists from nine countries, including Germany, have
taken part in the Erna raid games in Estonia.
WW2 left millions dead and Germany defeated. As a punishment,
it was divided, the Nazi party outlawed, and the survivors
were determined not to allow the Nazi movement thrive again.
Today’s united Germany presents an example of a strong democracy.
But, 60 years
on, a small European country has decided enough
time has passed to try to recapture the former
glory of the Nazi movement.
Estonia is
one of the newer members of the European Union
and NATO. For some reason this country of one-and-a-half
million seems to hanker after its Nazi past.
For fourteen
years soldiers and reservists from nine former
Nazi Germany allies have been competing with
each other in the forests of Estonia.
They follow
the route which had been taken by ‘Erna’ Estonian
soldiers who were on a saboteur mission for German
intelligence in August 1941.
“The Estonians
made a terrible mistake. Now they’re saying they
want to give honour to the people who made that
mistake, that’s the problem,” commented Efraim
Zuroff from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
But this year
for some reason somebody in the Germany’s Ministry
of Defence decided Germany needed to join those
raid games and sent a delegation.
“Nobody in Germany knows about it so I don’t think it is a very important thing,
and I don’t think it is a kind of political signal
of giving support to those games. Maybe the Ministry
of Defence thinks about it as a sport game and
not a kind of political manifestation,” explained
Werner Bergmann from the Institute of Anti-Semitism.
One would expect that the Jews of Germany would be among the most concerned,
but in a sinister deja vu they prefer not to
dig too deep.
“I would not
say that this is government-level anti-Semitism
or support for Nazism in Germany, and therefore
I would not see this as something extremely concerning,
this was probably something that was overlooked
by a low-ranking official,” said Yair Kanai from
the Israeli Embassy.
Meanwhile,
in the 1990s, when the Croatians declared their
independence from the Yugoslavian Federation,
Germany was the first to recognise and support
them, and close its eyes to the fascist symbols
they brought back to their cities.
There’s no
doubt that Estonia will be hosting the Erna games
again next year. The question is whether Germany
will be sending a larger delegation or not.
russiatoday.ru
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