Israel and the delusions of Germany’s ‘memory culture’
Germany embraced Israel to atone for its wartime guilt. But was this in part a way to avoid truly confronting its past?
After the second world war, Germany’s contrition and radical self-cleansing, under allied supervision, as the chief tormentor of European Jews ought to have been straightforward. No country, however, matches its convoluted journey from ground zero in 1945 to Gaza today.
In recent decades, solidarity with the Jewish state has burnished Germany’s proud self-image as the only country that makes public remembrance of its criminal past the very foundation of its collective identity. Particularly since German reunification, a Shoah-centred memory has been comprehensively institutionalised. School curriculums and calendars emphasise anniversaries such as 27 January (the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz) and 8 May (the final surrender of the Nazis). Monuments, memorials and museums across the country commemorate the victims of German crimes. A resonant symbol of this memory culture is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe near the Brandenburg Gate in the capital, Berlin, probably the only major national monument to commemorate the victims of a nation rather than the nation itself.
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