Since 1945 (West) Germany had to deal with the
question of how to create the remembrance for the victims of the Shoah
who were murdered by Germans and the other executioners who helped them in
the occupied countries. While East Germany tried to do it in a dogmatic
way – to manifest that the GDR is “anti-Nazism” and therefore the question
about guilt and responsibility does not exist! – West Germany was clothed
in silence. After the 1970s there were some media like films and books
which broke this silence. A widespread culture of remembrance was built up
by official institutions and by some individual initiatives and beside the
“normal” anti-Semitism the outstanding face of Germany showed the will to
remember. Then there was in 1987 the “Historikerstreit” and after this the
“Goldhagen debate” in 1996 and in 1998 the “Walser-Bubis-Debate” – the
last one between the German author Martin Walser and the head of the
German Jews who are unified in the “Zentralrat”, Ignatz Bubis (who died in
autumn 1999). All the debates were dealing with the need to remember and
the question if the Shoah was really a unique genocide in the
history of mankind. So it could be summarized that for nearly 15 years
there has been a tendency not only to compare the Shoah to other
crimes against humanity or even to the life of the Germans between 1933
and 1945, but to put this period, like any one period, into the whole of
German history, so that these twelve years have their significance
minimized in the long run. This tendency is growing and even in the
official institutions in which remembrance is “created”, it exists more
and more. Because of this, an end cannot really be seen to the rapid and
intensive – and, for Jews, often hurtful – debates: they will continue –
in a way which will show more and more indifference towards the victims.