GERMANY’S way of remembering the 70th anniversary of the second world war’s end is the opposite of Russia’s grandstanding. Germans see the occasion as an exhortation to humility and moral honesty. They commemorate their own suffering, including mass rapes of German women by the Allies. But mainly they accept responsibility for the suffering that Germans inflicted on so many others. Marking the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April, Joachim Gauck, the president, talked of his country’s “immeasurable guilt”. On May 3rd, Angela Merkel, the chancellor, will strike a similar tone on the anniversary of Dachau’s liberation.
By chance the commemorations coincide with what may be the last big trial of a former Nazi. Oskar Gröning, now 93, was a book-keeper of sorts in Auschwitz-Birkenau. His job was to count the money of the arriving inmates and transfer it to Berlin. He says he sometimes stood at the ramp where the trains disgorged the victims, but only to guard luggage. Mr Gröning is now accused of being an accomplice in the murder of about 300,000 Jews who arrived on trains...
from The Economist: Europe http://ift.tt/1Kxoqab
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