What Should I Have Said? Re: Holocaust

She just brought it up herself out of the blue, with no conversation before it?!
It's like something out of Harry Enfield.
Anyone remember "I must apologise on behalf of my country!" guy?! 😁

@TowerRavenSeven have you considered cultural differences? Germans don't beat around the bush about anything. They don't find it that offensive and I doubt it was that deep. It shows that you are British because you didn't know what to say and now think about something to say. Just state your view.

The Holocaust was obviously terrible and shouldn't be forgotten. Maybe she expressed herself in a very clumsy way. Again, Germans don't think about how to say things to not offend anyone. It's actually offensive to not be direct as it seems disingenuous.

I don't think you are removed from a country's history. UK benefited financially from slavery and colonies. And that wealth is still there today. Passed down through families. UK is rich because it was rich 200 or so years ago. But worth bearing in mind slave trade wasn't done by all the population of the UK, just a handful. Same for Holocaust. I think it's perfectly understandable that Germans feel guilty. It's normal. If you are proud of your country's achievements, it's normal to also feel guilt and remorse when genocide takes place. It's far better than denying it altogether like Turkey has with the Armenian genocide. It's part of belonging to a nation.

Thanks, after I posted I realised that was what you were trying to do!

I think she needs to understand the difference between on the one hand remembering and learning for it (although we don’t seem to have learnt anything as a species, looking at the things happening today) and on the other hand expecting Germans to go about bowed down with shame.

No one sensible expects the latter - if they did, they’d have to apply the same to many other countries too.

But it’s such an appalling episode in human history that we have to keep remembering it, and why and how it happened. Not holding out much hope though!

Sorry, of course not I was just trying to illustrate my point that more context was needed.

I would say it is like Britain and the Atlantic Slave trade. I am not responsible for the slavery of millions of black Africans. But Britain was and it helped create what Britain is today.

I don't think it's something that should ever be forgotten, that age old saying about history repeating itself should always be remembered and events like this need to stay as history rather than current events. But I don't think any German not involved in the war (so realistically almost all Germans bar a few who fought still kicking around) should ever be blamed, feel blamed or have to apologise for the crimes committed by others. I feel similarly about slavery. Those alive now should not be held accountable for crimes they didn't commit. So if you agree you could say something along those lines 🤷🏻‍♀️

@DarkAether Dresden is in thousands and less than the bombing of London.

It's because the victims were Jewish. Sadly they are seen by many as undeserving of sympathy. It's the old story.

the uk has Dresden

Exactly this. I feel there is some important contextual information missing here.

Sorry I am a bit confused @pizzaHeart

How do you know what the woman said to @TowerRavenSeven about her parents being retired and living in the south of Germany? OP didn't mention those details, did she?

so naturally we were speaking about Germany

So let me see if I've got this right. You were speaking about things like beer, bratwurst, cars, manufacturing industry more generally, football rivalry (I'm sure you were told that Germany's main football rival is the Netherlands, not England), how Lidl is great but Waitrose is a bit nicer. That sort of thing.

That's what you talked about, right?

I mean, obviously you wouldn't bring up, in a social/acquaintance/party context, something utterly awful that happened nearly 100 years ago and that none of the people there, or their parents, could possibly have been involved in?

You wouldn't be the kind of person who thinks that, two generations and 84 million people further on, it's somehow appropriate to remind a German person whom you have just met about that time, because they happen to have been born in roughly the same few thousand square kilometres? Because, as PP have pointed out, they have had the legacy of National Socialism beaten out of them for nearly three generations now.

So you were just chatting about beer and bratwurst and BMWs, and suddenly, for no reason at all, this woman went off with "you know, it’s been 80 some years, can’t we move on from feeling guilty about the Holocaust?".

I mean, if you went to a party and met some Indian people, and they started going on about "Oh, you're a Brit, well, what about that Amritsar massacre, eh?", you would rightly feel very upset. So, just as polite Indian people wouldn't talk about that, you definitely ensured that the Holocaust didn't come up at all. This woman just totally went off on one, totally unprompted.

Right? Or did I miss some detail of the conversation?

Mao Zedong killed tens of millions of people
actually.

many years ago in a restaurant with polish people and other nations and a German guy. All of them were young guys. Someone mentioned lodz in Poland. And the German boy asked about it and where was it. I am ashamed to say i said it is famous for a German atrocity in the war. He looked so sad. I was only being honest but it was not for him to be ashamed.

Not strange at all. Britain has never fully acknowledged let alone apologised for the trauma of the Empire. Statues still stand in honour of some of its worst perpetrators. History is still taught in schools in a one-sided manner. There is a substantial proportion of the population, including many sitting MPs, who believe the Empire was the best of British - unashamedly so. Relatively speaking, Germany has prostrated itself on the international stage with grief and remorse. So no, not strange at all.

YANBU to be astounded this was someone's opening conversation at a party.

What any of us might think we might have said, with time to think about it, and not being in this situation, might well not be what came into our heads at that point in time.

The Brit's have behaved atrociously so many times, it's hard for us to judge anyone!

It was tactless of her to say that! You can't hold today's generations of Germans accountable but also it should never be forgotten what happened.
I say that as a person who has a half jewish mother (non religious) who also has 40 plus German relatives due to my grans sister marrying a German POW after WW2 ended. The older generations of Germans were truly uncomfortable discussing what took place in WW2 & the holocaust, it was regarded as an off limits topic.
I have visited Auschwitz & was truly shocked at what I saw that day, it should never be forgotten, especially given the recent rise of anti-semetic sentiment.

@AquaPeer your friend is wrong on two points.

Jewish people are not " white European" - it is a totally different culture

Other genocides were in thousands individually as opposed to millions.,

What an odd comment, for her to bring it up unprompted. Maybe she did it first deliberately, just to get it out there.

I actually see things differently. Many Germans were aware of the atrocities, many Germans benefited from acquiring Jewish businesses.

The history of how every day Germans behaved, their conduct generally, as part of the nazi party, being scared of the nazi party, doing anything to avoid being punished themselves, dobbing others in, is very very complex.

I don't think a dinner party is the correct forum for a truth & reconciliation discussion. This is such a complex thing, it's really not something to be discussed lightly.

I would have done the same as you probably. If I'd had my wits about me I might have said "for as long as any remaining trauma remains, no, we can't move on from collective guilt. It can be a powerful and productive emotion".

@WhimsicalGubbins76 But the woman didn't say that we should forget the Holocaust. She said shouldn't we move on from the guilt of the Holocaust. That's an entirely different sentiment.

She was also speaking in a second language, so she may not have been able to find the exact words to get across the nuance of what she wanted to say. German is a much more 'direct' language than English, so it may well be that some of what she was trying to say was lost in translation.

That is true, we won’t know what it feels like.

Do you think it could be a purposeful method to (relatively) quickly stamp out the antisemitic and racist beliefs that many Nazis would have continued beyond the 1945? Or at least make them more taboo to share in public?