What Should I Have Said? Re: Holocaust

A few skeletons in the family closet is hardly comparable.

Bizarre for her to bring it up unprompted like that. I think your acting surprised and speechless was an ideal response.

We had some German students live with us for a term and they articulated much better this kind of sentiment, that they feel even though they were born many decades later they still have to carry a kind of national guilt and shame for what happened. They did feel they kind of have to apologise for it in quite a personal way. We enjoyed their company immensely but I do think a German in the UK can attract a few WW2/ Hitler type comments occasionally.

I think I agree with this POV

Which part did you object to? She didn’t deny it happened (which would be terrible), she wants the country to move on.

It’s meaningless anyway. People have forgotten, look what’s happening in Palestine. Never again… except to Muslims.

I’m confused OP, where did she ask to forget about the holocaust?

‘you know, it’s been 80 some years, can’t we (meaning Germany) move on from feeling guilty about the Holocaust? We’ve said we’re sorry, can’t we just move on from it?”

I’m Jewish too 😂

I don’t refuse to talk about it, at all. But I do find it dismissive and disrespectful to bring it up for the sole purpose to then suggest we need to “move on” from blame.

No one blames the innocent living. But 80 years isn’t a long time and often racism does pass on through generations of families. I’m not suggesting the host was antisemetic, but I do find her choice of conversation and her subsequent dismissiveness, very questionable.

The difference is Germany has paid billions in reparations for WWII to the allies and to the survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants.

Germany has paid reparations

I’m with her. We should move on from thinking of ourselves as the glorious victors in WW2 too.

" I wouldn’t be talking about how we just need to “move on” from it."

She didn't say just 'move on', she said 'move on from the GUILT', which I agree with.

It’s right there
”…move on from feeling guilty.”
No even a whisper of forget about it.

Because "Great Britain" doesn't feel bad about it.

Nor do I. But if my grandparents were serial rapists and murders, I sure as hell wouldn’t choose it as a topic to discuss at a party and I wouldn’t be talking about how we just need to “move on” from it.

Germany has completely accepted its part in WWII.

I suppose in that situation I would have agreed that collective guilt doesn't seem helpful three generations on and said that it's for the whole of Europe to remember what happened and be vigilant against anti-semitism and extremism.

What a very weird lady

Tell this to everyone demanding the uk pay reparations and apologise for things that happened centuries ago! Why is it ok for Germany to move on from something that happened so relatively recently yet ppl are so eager to shriek how shitty ‘colonial Great Britain’ is for our past and refuse to move on from it?

Everyone knows what happened at concentration camps.

There is no rule against talking about it at a party. She said she wanted to move on FROM THE GUILT, not forget about it.
We must remember it for ever, but it's time for ordinary Germans living now to stop blaming themselves is what I presume she was saying and I agree with that.

I don't blame myself for anything my grandparents did.

I think I'd want to know what she meant by 'move on'? 'Move on' as in 'forget about'?

Seems like a lot of people are defending the woman or assuming that you must have said something to make her bring up the holocaust. Bizarre.

She just started talking about it spontaneously? Or was basil fawlty-itis having an affect on someone?
Of course it sounds put of order, but the only thing to do would be to assertively state your opinion at the time. Say the reason why you don't agree. Not in a rude way. You could've had a healthy debate on it. But the time has passed now. I can see why you might not like what she said. It's sounds crass.

That's awful and I think the UK is worse for that than some other countries because of the constant War films.

OP, you need to clarify how the Holocaust came up.
All we have is "naturally we were talking about Germany" and then the German woman jumping down your throat.

I lost members of my family in the concentration camps. I’m well aware what happened in them. I am not uncomfortable talking about the Holocaust because we talked about it all the time when I was growing up at home and in Saturday school at the synagogue.

Part of remembering the Holocaust is not being afraid to talk about the Holocaust. If it becomes a forbidden topic, that is when the forgetting will start. Your discomfort might be linked to you forgetting the Holocaust was a genocide, not a “massacre” as you have minimised it down to. Dismissing is refusing to talk about it imho, because it makes you “uncomfortable.”

A conversation about moving on from expecting today’s Germans to feel guilt is a conversation worth having imho. Talking about the Holocaust keeps the memory alive.

I think you've probably missed what was going on. I think (although I don't KNOW of course) that she might have been talking about how Germany has taken the Israeli government's side in the Gaza conflict and that is not as a result of a rational evaluation of what is going on, but of guilt for what Germany did in the past. So, what she might mean is that it's time for Germany to defend the oppressed rather than the oppressor in Gaza.

She didn't say to 'forget' about the Holocaust, did she? I presume she meant to stop letting it colour how they approach international relations today.