5-09-05, 6:46pm
Many Germans still debate whether the war's end 60 years ago was a cause for jubilation or mourning. The current government position is to call it 'liberation', especially on major well-reported occasions, but not to forget the mourning part either. This can best be described with the German word invention 'Jein', a combination of Ja (Yes) and Nein (No).
The same is true of this past weekend, full of ceremonies on the 60th anniversary of what the USA calls VE-Day. And what about the menace of the Neo-Nazis, who threatened to disrupt the whole event?
The National Democratic Party (NPD), a well-financed pro-Nazi group which marked up alarming gains in state elections in Saxony last year, applied to hold a parade at Berlin's cherished Brandenburg Gate, and near the new Holocaust Memorial, a field of concrete pillars to be unveiled later this week. There was a storm of protest in many countries several years ago when the same band of booted, tough-looking yeggs marched through the Brandenburg Gate just like Hitler's soldiers in years gone by. A repeat would never do. All kinds of solutions were considered, including a ban on the party - a first attempt at this failed miserably three years ago (it turned out that too many leading Nazis were government infiltrators). The matter was thrown back and forth between judges and politicians; it was finally ruled that the nazis could not march to Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust Memorial, but could march from the central square, Alexanderplatz, down Karl Liebknecht Strasse and the famous Unter den Linden boulevard to a central station at Friedrichstrasse. Political leaders then announced a counterdemonstration at the Brandenburg Gate, plus a line of people with burning candles through East Berlin - on the evening before.
The evening was icy and rainy; there were far fewer candle-holders than hoped for. On Sunday, however, thousands did how up at Brandenburg Gate, wishing to show their anti-fascist feelings but getting songs, dances, a few bland statements and booths with food and drink. They could also watch, on a big TV screen, the main speech in the nearby Bundestag building, where President Koehler spoke out against the Hitler regime and its crimes, 'which must never happen again'. He also larded his speech with attacks on the (East) German Democratic Republic, whose people, he commiserated, had to keep suffering from 1945 until 1990 when they achieved the freedom and blessings lucky West Germans had been enjoying all along.
Among less pleasant blessings, which he barely mentioned, were the 20 percent unemployment rate in eastern German area, the hopelessness of young people who, finding neither training nor jobs, leave the state, turning towns and villages increasingly into retirement retreats with the resultant growth, since unification, of a dangerous neo-Nazi threat.
Koehler called for a search for the roots of the Nazi rise, so as to prevent any return, but did not say a word about giant conglomerates like Siemens, Thyssen-Krupp, Bayer, BASF (parts of the old IG Farben trust which ran Auschwitz), or the major banks and insurance companies - all of which financed Hitler's path to power and made billions from the war, especially from slave laborers and concentration camp prisoners who toiled and died in their factories. The same companies still rule much of the roost, including East German and eastern European areas they were thrown out of so hopefully after 1945.
But what about the neo-Nazis on Sunday in Berlin? Several thousand had gathered from all over Germany and other countries as well. Not all were skinheads, not all had fat napes and violent tattooed slogans, but enough did to make them look very vicious indeed.
There was a concentration of police, also from many parts of Germany, such as the city had rarely seen; hundreds of squad cars, 'Green Minnas', mounted cops and circling helicopters, all out to 'protect the free demonstration rights' of the Nazis. They blocked off all access by anyone else to the entire route of march. Street car and bus routes were cut, subway and elevated stations closed down, streets and bridges closed to all but proven residents.
Yet somehow or other the anti-fascists did manage to gather - not close enough to angrily shout or curse or throw a bottle or beer can. But they did effectively blocked the planned route of march of the Nazis. In Leipzig a week earlier the police had used pepper gas, truncheons and waterthrowers to disperse the anti-fascists. In Berlin they were careful to avoid any violence which could get onto international TV screens and spoil the celebrations. Thus, the Nazis were able to control Berlin's main square from morning to evening, but could not move one block forward on their march. In the evening, dampened by a brief thundershower, they were pushed onto the elevated trains and away from Berlin.
The clear message was, they are not wanted in Berlin, not by most Berliners, and especially the ten thousand or more mostly left-wingers who, recalling the terrible past which ended sixty years ago, said 'Fascism isn't an opinion, it's a crime!' There were other lessons, learned and unlearned. Politicians in the Bundestag condemn the 'extreme left and extreme right', ignoring the fact that Hitler's repression, even before he began the 'final solution of the Jewish problem' was against the left, socialists and especially communists. Many of the politicians, after the ceremonies, will return to their veiled attacks against unwanted 'asylum-seekers' and other foreign elements. They will continue cutting social benefits for workers, students, patients, pensioners and especially the jobless. They will never forget to carefully denounce the open neo-Nazis. But these same jack-booted thugs, though kept from marching down
Berlin's most famous boulevard by several thousand anti-fascists, nevertheless had the whole d owntown area of Berlin tied up completely on a day marking the end of Nazi rule. Was that a real victory? The answer is again 'Yein'!
--V. Grossman, an American journalist who has lived in East Berlin for 38 years.
