Allemagne: la culture de la mémoire de la Shoah part en vrille à grande vitesse

Le journaliste et "figure publique" allemand Christoph Hörstel  qui est un soutien zélé du régime iranien et du Hezbollah devait donner une conférence au mémorial du camp de concentration nazi Sachsenhausen.  Hörstel estime que l'Allemagne ne doit strictement rien à Israël notamment en ce qui concerne son existence, à laquelle par ailleurs il s'oppose.  Devant le tollé, l'invitation fut retirée.  N'empêche.  Ni les dirigeants du mémorial de Sachsenhausen ni sa co-conférencière Astrid Ley ne savent les valeurs que le journaliste défend ou bien ils les trouvent normales. Henryk M. Broder a écrit avec sarcasme que la culture allemande de la mémoire fonctionne "super bien". Et rappela que l'écrivain Eike Geiselavait coutume de dire que la culture allemande de la mémoire (ce que les Français appellent "le devoir de mémoire") représentait "la forme la plus aboutie de l'oubli".

Articles connexes: "Gedenkkultur" auf den Hund gekommen, par Thomas von der Osten-Sacken @ Jungle World et Wiesenthal Center: Concentration camp memorial fails to heed warning from the Holocaust, par Benjamin Weinthal @ JPost

JPost: German journalist Christoph Hörstel, a zealous supporter of Iran’s regime and Hezbollah and an alleged denier of the Holocaust, was invited to an event at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp to commemorate the July 20, 1944, attempt to assassinate Hitler by German officers.

German author Tilman Tarach reported on Friday about the slated event on the website of the Berlin-based Jungle World weekly, causing organizers of the Sachsenhausen memorial to cancel Hörstel’s appearance the same day.

The planned participation of Hörstel showed that Germany’s remembrance culture had “gone to the dogs,” Tarach said. Organizers turned victims into perpetrators with the “planned event of a Holocaust- denier or relativist,” he wrote.  [...]

Tarach recounted an example of Hörstel’s playing down, or possibly denying, the Holocaust, on his Facebook page.  When someone asked about revising the Holocaust, Hörstel replied, “All in good time.”

Hörstel has said that Germany “has in no way responsibility for the security of Israel or for its right to exist.” He has spoken at the annual Al-Quds Day March in Berlin, which attracts more than 1,000 supporters of Hezbollah and Iran, and calls for the elimination of Israel. [...]

German-Jewish commentator and satirical polemicist Henryk M. Broder sarcastically wrote on The Axis of Good website that Germany’s remembrance culture is functioning “super.” He recalled a comment from the late writer Eike Geisel who said that Germany’s remembrance culture represents “the highest form of forgetting.”


Sachsenhausen’s invitation to Hörstel together with his appearance at the Chancellery and [Astrid] Ley’s alleged ignorance of Hörstel’s writings and activities are proof positive that Geisel was right, Broder said.

“The memory of the crimes of the Nazis in the meantime serves to prepare as propaganda for the next final solution of the Jews in the Middle East,” Broder wrote in connection with the Sachsenhausen controversy.

The row is a reminder of other recent controversies.

The Dachau concentration camp memorial faced criticism in February from Bloomberg columnist Jeffery Goldberg as he noted that the memorial’s bookstore sells biographies of Philip Roth and Woody Allen, labeling it “ridiculousness.”

Israeli-born author Tuvia Tenenbom called for the dismissal of Dr. Volkhard Knigge, the head of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial, after alleging that Knigge told him that Jews should have settled in Uganda instead of establishing the State of Israel. Daniel Gaede, an educator at Buchenwald, faced criticism from Tenenbom for his participation in anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian activities.  “This man [Gaede] spends his free time demonstrating against Israel and in support of Gaza’s Palestinians,” Tenenbom wrote.

Knigge wrote to The Jerusalem Post at the time that “Mr. Tenenbom reproduces the conversations he held with me and the head of the memorial education department in distorted form. I never at any time said that Jews should have been settled in Uganda.”