History in the Making

Newsletter 2009/11/13 - History in the Making

BERLIN/PARIS (Own report) - At the end of this past week, the establishment in Berlin was reviewing with great satisfaction a week that brought several victories for its partisan interpretation of history. According to observers, the German Chancellor's participation in the commemoration ceremonies of the Armistice ending the First World War in Paris was "a priceless political act". The transformation of the memory of the victory over the German aggressors into a
memorial, leveling for the victims "on both sides" of the war, was accompanied by the type of criticism of the Versailles Treaty of 1919,
that is usually heard mainly from German revisionists. Berlin's celebration of a "Festival of the Germans" on Nov. 9, the day of the commemoration of the Nazi Pogrom Night in 1938, is an "affront to the Jewish victims," one that would not have been fathomable just a few years earlier, is a statement that was met with applause. "Making policy with history is staking a claim on spiritual leadership" is the way the press summed up the fact that the German interpretation of history is being imposed on the other European nations. This Sunday, Berlin will close the current memorial week with the annual commemoration of the German soldiers killed in battle ("Volkstrauertag" National Day of Mourning). As usual, also German war criminals will be honored at the ceremonies.

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http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56298