Can Israel finally take a major active step in this direction and not squander
the opportunity presented by Gauck's visit.
Ever since the end of World War II, the shadow of the Holocaust has naturally
strongly influenced German-Jewish relations, and since the establishment
of Israel, that subject is a permanent factor in the relations
between the Federal Republic and the Jewish state. Thus a visit
of a German president to Israel is unlike that of any other head
of state and is of unique significance to both sides.
Over the years, such visits have contributed to the slowly-evolving process of
reconciliation and cooperation which has developed between Germany
and Israel and helped strengthen the ties between the two countries,
despite the horrific and unforgivable crimes committed by the Third
Reich against the Jewish people.
In that context, the visit to Israel this week
of recently elected (this past March 18) German President Joachim
Gauck poses a serious dilemma for Israeli leaders. For the first
time ever, the visiting German head of state does not share the
heretofore-accepted narrative of the uniqueness of the Holocaust
and its recognition as a sui generis event in the annals of mankind.
Given the fact that in Germany the primary function
of the president, who does not have executive powers, is, in the
words of the important German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
following Gauck’s election to the post, “to ensure that the people
are provided with a compass for intellect and morals... [and] is
responsible for endowing politics with meaning,” this is likely
to prove extremely problematic for Israel and Jews the world over.
Gauck’s divergence from the narrative accepted
by previous German presidents became public almost four years ago
when he signed the Prague Declaration of June 3, 2008. This document,
which was signed by more than two dozen mostly East European intellectuals
and political leaders, promotes the canard of equivalence between
Nazi and Communist crimes. It calls for specific practical steps
which, if implemented, would undermine the justified current status
of the Holocaust as a unique case of genocide unprecedented in
human history.
Thus, for example, the Declaration calls for the
designation of August 23 as a joint day of commemoration for all
the victims of totalitarian regimes. In other words, all those
murdered by the Nazis and the Communists. The choice of date in
this case is indicative of the agenda.
August 23 was the date of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Non-Aggression Pact signed in 1939 by Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union. The message conveyed by the choice of that date is that
the Soviet Union, by signing the treaty with the Third Reich, in
effect shares equal responsibility for the atrocities of World
War II, a distorted view of the history of that conflict, which
purposely ignores the indispensable role of the Red Army in defeating
Nazi Germany, and falsely equates the regime which conceived, planned,
built and ran the Auschwitz death camp, with the country whose
armed forces liberated that death factory and effectively halted
the mass annihilation conducted there.
NEEDLESS TO say, should this proposal ever be
implemented, and a non-binding resolution calling for the designation
of August 23 as a joint day of commemoration was already passed
by a huge margin in the European Union, the future of the International
Holocaust Memorial day established by the United Nations in 2005
would look extremely bleak.
Other initiatives called for by the Declaration
would also pose a danger to the accepted Holocaust narrative, whether
it is the call to rewrite European textbooks in the spirit of the
equivalency between Nazi and Communist crimes or the desire to
establish a “European Institute of Memory and Conscience,” which
would include a museum which would reflect that false equivalency
and support the work of Eastern European research institutes, which
since their establishment have focused exclusively on Communist
crimes and purposely ignored those of the Nazis.
Prior to his election, President Gauck campaigned
for civil rights in his native East Germany and was the director
of the Stasi Archives, and as such one can understand his natural
sensitivity to the crimes committed by the Communists, a sensitivity
which might also have been significantly influenced by the arrest,
while he was a youngster, of his own father by the East Germans.
Yet while there is a legitimate case to be made
for greater recognition of Communist crimes and additional commemoration
and concern for their victims, the attempt to do so by creating
a false symmetry with the Holocaust is not only misguided, it is
rooted in the dishonest ulterior motives of its main proponents
in the post-Communist world, and particularly the Baltic countries,
one of whose major goals is to rid themselves of the guilt for
their extensive collaboration with Nazi Germany in the mass murder
of Jews.
Thus if Communist and Nazi crimes are declared
equivalent, thereby earning the former a false categorization as
genocide, they in turn can point to the crimes of Jewish Communists
and spare themselves the justified accusations previously levelled
against them. If members of every nation, including even Jews,
are guilty of the most terrible of crimes, then obviously no nation
can be accused, and its members prosecuted. If the choice is between
being a nation of killers and a nations of victims, what country
would not opt for the latter?
After his election, President Gauck was quoted
in the German daily Tageszeitung as saying that in the wake of
the debate over his candidacy, he would “engage himself with new
issues, problems, and people.” His visit to Israel is therefore
an excellent opportunity for our political leaders to enter into
dialogue with him and present the serious dangers posed by the
Prague Declaration and the potentially terrible long-term effects
of its practical proposals.
The question is, however, whether President Shimon
Peres, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor
Liberman are fully cognizant of this issue and willing to bring
it to the table during their meetings with Gauck.
Until now, Israel has refrained from actively
seeking to thwart the adoption of the Prague Declaration and its
various recommendations, even in its bilateral contacts with far-less
important countries like Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia which are
its major proponents. It remains to be seen whether the Jewish
state can finally take a major active step in this direction and
not squander the opportunity presented by the visit this week of
German President Joachim Gauck. jpost.com
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