Germany's Reckoning with its Past
- In every bookstore I've been in in Germany, I have seen a "history table" filled with recent books dealing with the Nazi Party, including autobiographies of concentration camp survivors, biographies of historical figures, oral interviews, recently discovered letters from the WW II era, and so on.
- Germany has accepted more refugees from Syria, north Africa, and other war-torn regions than any other European nation or the U.S.
- German citizens are actively volunteering their services to orient newcomers to the country, to teach German, and to offer psychological counseling.
- Despite some opposition to refugees in the country, anti-right and anti-neo-Nazi demonstrations are frequent. Demonstrations in support of refugees are common.
- Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf was banned in Germany up until two years ago, when a new heavily annotated edition was published.
- It is illegal to peform the "Sieg Heil" Nazi salute (two Chinese tourists were arrested a few weeks ago for doing so).
- Anti-Nazi graffiti is common in public places.
- The new far-right, anti-immigrant political party AfD (Alternative for Germany) has a small following and is denounced by most. However, on September 24, 2017, the party won nearly 13% of the national vote, ahead of the Green Party, and now has representation in the German Parliament. In an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Anna Sauerbrey stated that the party will receive roughly 94 out of about 709 seats in Parliament. The AfD has a particularly strong presence in the former East Germany, which still lags economically behind the rest of the country.
- Public memorials of the millions murdered by Nazis are common. Below are three brass stones from the Stolpersteine ("stumbling stones") Symbolic Art Project memorializing three members of a family who were arrested, deported, and murdered. Since the project began in 1996, over 61,000 "stones" have been laid in 1200 places in Germany and across Europe by Gunter Demnig, artist and creator of the project.
