„It happened, therefore it can happen again“
Primo Levi
For several years already Robert Bosch foundation organizes study tours to Germany for groups from the region of former Yugoslavia (and further – the West Balkans). The primary goal of these visits is to introduce the participants with the ways in which the German society memorializes its violent past. The one related to the WWII and, specifically, the suffering and extermination of the European Jews, as well as the past relating to the post-war period and the crimes committed in the name of and under the flag of socialism within the former Democratic Republic of Germany.
During the five days, a group of 18 participants had an opportunity to visit various places of remembrance, museums, memorial centres and institutions in Berlin, Weimar and Munchen. Some of the places we visited were the following: the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin (and the Information Centre within it), the Memorial of the Wannsee Conference, the office of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives, Buchenwald Memorial, the court in Munchen in which the Nazi villain John Demjanjuk (Ivan Mykolaiovych Demianiuk) was tried at and many other places, monuments and memorials. Professional support was secured at all the places in the form of guides or presenters which were at our disposal for questions and discussions after the organized tour. Special support was offered by Christoph Kreutzmüller, a historian from the Humboldt University in Berlin, who was at our disposal during the whole study trip.
For the highly motivated group, this was a unique opportunity to get closely familiarized with the mechanisms which drive (or interfere with) the establishment of the institutional memory of the not so distant German past. Almost every conversation and discussion we had left us with a lot of insight, and sometimes an unrealized need to keep discussing, arguing and fiercely disputing about the things we had seen and heard. Unfortunately, the concept itself was very tightly filled up, so there was a visible lack of space for a more structured exchange and reflection, and thus also the establishment of some relationships, parallels and divergences of the German and our context. For the participants coming from a context which is simultaneously dealing with the past and the present, there were almost no unnecessary or meaningless moments during this visit. Our context, unlike the German, does not have a clear line of demarcation between the past and the present, or a historical and/or ideological ground zero which would mark a clear break with the violence and a beginning of something new and essentially different. Probably this is where lays one of the stronger sources of motivation and interest for this topic for people coming from our region.
The tour also offered numerous opportunities for gaining deeper insight into the ways in which modern Germany is functioning, and we surely did not lack opportunity to get immediately convinced in the power of some global (cultural? political?) phenomena which are taking absurd proportions. One of those is surely the phenomena/truth/fact that history sells. In a city as abundant and soaked with history, as Berlin surely is, that is probably more visible than anywhere else. The apparent taboo on the trade with the memorabilia of the holocaust1 actually just emphasizes the global ethical condition where everything is for sale, especially the artefacts of the newer, bloody and morbid history.
The contradictions visible from the relation of the German society towards the atrocities and crimes committed in their own name are particularly interesting. Although it would be exaggerated to say that all the traumas and taboos have been processed, honest endeavour to institutionally and systematically send a message is very visible – we are aware what we had done or supported, we don’t want it to be forgotten, we don’t want it to be repeated. The construction and careful protection of the democratic system and the European values, and transforming the so called “European values” into heritage, are seen as a guarantee that it will not to happen again. That same system swallows a lump when it needs to declare its stance on, let’s say, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, military NATO interventions around the world, or on the fact that, well, some atrocities had occurred according to well known notorious models just some years ago, some hundreds of kilometres from the EU “paradise”. Let’s not mention the impression that the mentioning of the German victims of allied bombing, hunger, post-war tortures is still out of the dominant narrative and is mostly considered dangerous flirting with the right-wing political streams in that country. When, however, it is necessary to equalize the “two dictatorships” and speak out on both the national-socialistic and the latter socialist rule in the same tone, that flirting with the right-wing anti-communism does not seem that appalling.
There are many more contradictions, like in many other societies. From the perspective of someone from former Yugoslavia, I can still say that the institutional support enjoyed for facing of and dealing with the Nazi past in Germany today is something that our societies will not reach for a long time. The trap in which people from this region often fall into is to consciously or unconsciously refuse to find out more about the arduous path that Germany has undergone during that process. More significant steps in that area do not happen just like that, on their own, or due to the pure passage of time. They are usually preceded by the persistent efforts of citizens and politicians to thematize the past, reassess it, place it on the agenda of the everyday political acting.
The words of Primo Levi, at the beginning of this text, are found on the entrance of the Informative Centre of the Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe. Spoken out by a survived inmate from Auschwitz, a man who indebted the world with his brilliant testimonies and reflections on the life in the camp and after it, these words could not have been chosen better. They warn the visitors of this centre of the fragility of the delusion that the pure bringing to light of the horrors of the past will prevent their reoccurrence in the future. Within that context they serve as a warning to a whole society – democratic, rich, well-fed and even better dressed – not to become lulled in self-complacency and a wrongful conviction that the evil is forever prevented.
And what would make an adequate warning for our societies – is a big question for which an answer needs to be found.
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1 Luckily, it is still not possible to buy miniature models of concentration camps, nor the postcards with the photographs of starved inmates of the death camps, or the replicas of the letters that the inmates were sending from detention. Other/Different forms of “sales” are widely deployed, and a laic insight is sufficient to notice how the places of atrocities and horrors from the past are becoming one the most visited spots on the tourist maps.