Conference taveng::bagels

>>    too late and wonder why politically it was mentioned today?

What's today?  Hitler's birthday?

I agree - too little, too late.  I also wonder if it's designed to assuage 
concerns that a unified Germany is a threat.

    Today was the first day's session of the first non-communist government
    in the history of the DDR.  It is significant, that with all the
    business that East Germany has to take care of, that it's very first
    official act was to declare responsibility for the Holocaust, something
    it never did under communist rule.
    
    Of course it doesn't bring my relatives back from the dead.  But it
    makes me feel a little bit more comfortable about having a "united"
    Germany in my future.
    
    The DDR has previously agreed to pay reparations to survivors, and to
    Israel as the representative of those families that have no surviving
    descendants.  Again, too little, too late, but better than not at all.
    
    Ed

    They also stated that the East German goverment was formed in reaction
    to the Nazis and that the West German government should be held
    responsible, or so I understood from the radio.  Which leads to some
    curious ironies:
    
    - Why should they apologize if they are not responsible?
    - As the next step is unification with West Germany, will the East
    German states then become responsible?
    - I doubt it was meant as a criticism of West German reparations, or?
    
    But - at least the anti-Semites can't deny it happened, without
    stretching credulity even farther beyond absurdity.
    
    Be interesting to watch the repurcussions.
    
    
    

    Re: .3
    
    It is a misunderstanding.  Since 1945 East Germany claimed that the
    communists were victims of the Nazis and for that reason they
    were not responsible for the Nazi's crimes.  The new non-communist East
    German govt. accepted the guilt.  I believe it is a significant step,
    as .2 stated, considering all other events in that country.
    
    Leo

I agree with .2.  It's a good sign that this was one of the first acts of
the first freely elected government of the DDR.  Neither Germany has
consistently been as responsible as it might have been for its own past,
but the new East German government is doing about as much as it possibly
could at this stage.

The offer to pay reparations shows sensitivity, as do the current talks
about normalizing relations with Israel.  The DDR may not last long enough
to complete arrangements for either of those, but its behavior during its
final months deserves acknowledgement.

(the following comments were made by Rabi Yehuda Kelemer of the Young Israel of
West Hempstead NY on the last day of Pesach, as I recall them)

The Germans have apologized for the Holocaust and asked for our forgivness.  But
do we (the Jewish people) have the right to forgive?  Those of us who survived
the Holocaust are not the ones against whom the Nazis committed the greatest 
crimes.

In Halacha, if one has wronged someone who has since passed on, one cannot 
ask the deceased's family for forgivness.  The family has no power to forgive.
One must go to the grave of the deceased and, in the presence of a minyan, 
ask the deceased for forgivness.  The 'sinner' will live out the rest of his 
days never knowing whether he has been forgiven.

The only response we can have is to remember those who were lost in silence.

(the following comments are my own)

Let the Germans keep their reperation money.  It always struck me as 
putting a price on a human life so they can buy forgivness.  

    But the situation is more complex: the people apologizing are not
    the ones who did the crime.
    
    There are issues here which arise from the fact that it wasn't just
    person A killing person B.  Perhaps the reparations should be thought
    of as a payment from an heir of the killer to the heir of the victim,
    more because the heir of the killer does not want to be in the position
    of profiting from the killer's crime.
    
    			-John Bishop

If the sins of the fathers be paid for by the sons, then the apology
    is appropriate.  They want to set the record right and do something
    to comment on the past. 
    
    Has anyone read the statement?  It is quite beseeching and decent.  
    Something had to be said and I respect them for doing it.
    I'm not sure that the apology would be accepted by some of the
    survivors that I know, but at least the East Germans acknowledged
    what happened.  It won't undo the past but it's a good move.  Maybe
    as children of the prime sufferers we can begin to talk to one another
    about it.  Had I witnessed my family killed, I might not be so open
    to reconciliation.
    
    My daughter has the statement posted on her bulletin
    board and needs to go to Germany to-day for an international meeting.
    We have always found it hard to be in Germany because 84 or 87 of
    our family perished in the Holocaust.   The German statement made
    it easier for her to travel there.  
                                 
    I wonder if in the history of warfare if any nation has ever
    *voluntarily*  acknowledged its war crimes before?
    
    RR

>    Has anyone read the statement?  It is quite beseeching and decent.  


From the Jerusalem Post Int'l Ed of 21 April - "...exerpts from the East
German statement:

'We, the first freely-elected parliamentarians of East Germany, admit our 
responsibility as Germans in East Germany for their history and their future 
and declare unanimously before the world:

'Immeasurable suffering was inflicted on the peoples of the world by Germans 
during the time of National Socialism.  Nationalism and racial madness led to 
genocide, particularly of the Jews in all European countries, of the people of 
the Soviet Union, the Polish people and the Gypsy people.

'Parliament...admits joint responsibility on behalf of the people for the 
humiliation, expulsion and murder of Jewish women, men and children.  We feel 
sad and ashamed and acknowledge this burden of German history.

'We ask the Jews of the world to forgive us.  We ask the people of Israel to 
forgive us for the hypocrisy and hostility of official East German policies 
toward Israel and for the persecution and degredation of Jewish citizens also 
after 1945 in our country.

'We declare our willingness to contribute as much as possible to the healing of 
mental and physical sufferings of survivors and to provide just compensation 
for material losses.

'We are for giving persecuted Jews asylum in East Germany.'"