rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Arthur Pewtey) (05/04/85)
> The problem with visiting Bitberg is that it HONORS the german veterens > of world war II. As these people were feeding my relatives into the > chimneys, I take personal offense at the suggestion that the german > people should EVER be forgiven for what they did. [Mark Roddy] Right! They're all to blame. They're all evil. Those "German people". What we should do is find some "final solution" to the German problem... Wait a minute. Isn't that acting the same way for which we despised the Nazis? Isn't tainting an entire group of people the same type of racism that the Nazis engaged in when they told the German people how the Jews were to blame for their problems, and how they should be gotten rid of. You may not be proposing an extermination of the German people, but your attitude towards an entire race of people is no different than those in Germany who did engage in the slaughter of millions. Did you stand up when women and children were massacred in Vietnam by Americans? Can you thus blame every German who didn't do the same in the days of the Third Reich? The racism that Hitler tapped in the Germans exists amidst all nationalistic and religionistic superiority ideals, EVEN among Jews. A Hitler can and still might spring up anywhere. To single out the Germans because they were the "lucky" ones who got Hitler is preposterous. We have all been victims of propaganda, swayed by it despite our best efforts. Hitler succeeded in doing it because he was smart. His tactics are still widely used today, and not just by neo-Nazis. So please realize the irony of your own attitude towards the Germans. -- "to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting." - e. e. cummings Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr