Reply #20: blackhorse: You are partly right and partly wrong. [View All]

You start with: "No need to worry? You mean the wind that periodically blows out of the current neonazi movement and results in attacks like the arson attack that killed the Turks in northern Germany a few years back?"

But blackhorse: I had already said that IF history should repeat itself the victims would be the Turks, hadn't I?

What I meant - and I thought wrote - was no more than that: that this restriction on Jewish immigration is nothing to worry about. THAT has definitely nothing to do with anti-semitism. Quite the contrary. Small and densely populated Germany has never been an immigration country. Migration of Russian Jews has been a - benevolent - exception already. We now see that this has had damaging affects so we are restricting it, we are not even making it impossible. Refugees are a totally different matter.

You write: "As tolerant as many Germans are, there is still a hard core of profoundly intolerant people in Germany today. While it may be easy to discount them, IMO, it is not wise to do so". That is correct. I would be the last to discount them. Neither my fellow countrymen who often put me to shame nor intolerant people in Zimbabwe - or the US, for that matter.

You write: "I am astounded by the number of people I've spoken to in Europe (not just Germany) who still believe that the Jews somehow brought the Holocaust upon themselves." - I definitively have never spoken to anybody who has voiced this belief. And I am a 50 year old German. I KNOW that some right-wing radicals say this. And I don't think that we should neglect this. But never ever have I heard anybody say so. So I really wonder who you have been talking to :)

"any society or culture anywhere can be led by the wrong people into committing terribly wrongful acts." How true. Understanding people not only learn by their own mistakes but try and learn by the mistakes of others, also.

"We - all - need to worry, and watch for signals that things are heading the wrong way": Let me sign this. Only, once more: Restricting Russian Jewish immigration into Germany does not fall into this category.

"large construction firm in southern Germany. Their firm's logo is the name of the founder, and contrives to make quite obvious the letters "SS"": That is more than bad taste. It solves nothing and makes nothing undone, but the abbreviation "SS" in modern Germany is as unthinkable as the first name "Adolf" (just think of the day when no US boy can ever be called "George" anymore!). Therefore what you have called your "favorite example" is really no example at all but rather a - hateful - exception. I'd like to know the exact name of this firm; I would like to check into this. Write me a PM if you don't want to post here.

Dir auch frohe Weihnachten!