German politician called Berlin's Holocaust Memorial "a monument of shame." Then this happened..

[dixiegrrrrl]

Artists built a copy of it outside his home.

Germany’s most notorious far-right politician. Bjorn Höcke, questioned the guiding precept of modern Germany — the country’s culpability in World War II and the Holocaust — calling on Germans to make a “180 degree” turn in the way they viewed their history.

Germans were “the only people in the world to plant a monument of shame in the heart of their capital,” he said, referring to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin.

And then, one recent Wednesday morning, Mr. Höcke woke up in his rural home to find the Holocaust memorial outside his bedroom window: 24 rectangular concrete slabs, one section of the original monument, rebuilt to scale on the property immediately neighboring his.

The only difference: The slabs had been rotated 180 degrees.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/25/world/europe/germany-bjorn-hocke-bornhagen.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur

[dalton99a]

1. "Their rental contract runs until 2022."

Great job.

[sandensea]

2. He sounds like a Trumpkin - both for the extremism as well as the sheer inaccuracy.

Numerous national capitals have “monuments of shame” built as memorials for past genocides or waves of state terrorism.

One of the most notable is the Remembrance Park in Buenos Aires, built in 2007 overlooking the area where the infamous death flights took place 30 years earlier. Some 8,000 dissidents were disposed of this way (at least 22,000 were killed in all, by the dictatorship's own admission).

[DFW]

3. Germans learn about the Holocaust in elementary school

They do this so it won't happen again in their country. They do not have a lot of patience for deniers here.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. I did not know that.

Dumbing down our school system is progressing quite well here.

[Pachamama]

7. That was one 4th grade field trip I won't ever forget....the one to Dachau...

It changed me...I couldn't sleep and talked about it for weeks...talked to my grandparents about the war.... was in shock...

Yes, as 4th graders this is what in German school we did for a field trip and its treated as very important...because it is...

[sandensea]

8. It never ceases to amaze me that the Holocaust is still a subject of debate.

All thanks to the far right. The little bastards are very good at the cheese-on-the-wall tactic: just keep throwing anything up there, because something is bound to stick.

On a lighter note, Happy Holidays DFW! All the Best to you and yours.

[DFW]

11. Thanks, the same to you and your people!

We are currently in panic mode, trying to get last minute stuff done, getting my wife's mom ready for a car we organized to drive her back to her home in northern Germany, while the rest of us do our last.minute packing for our trip to the USA this morning-

(Been away so long, I hardly knew the place....)

[marble falls]

4. People who forget history ......... n/t

[JI7]

9. not forget, but deny

that's what they want to to do and then they want to make it like it never happened . turn it into a question of debate. the idiot media in the US lets anything the right wing spews be treated as if it requires a real debate like the birther and swift boat crap instead of calling them out on their lies.

[Yonnie3]

6. One late night walking across Bremen City, I saw something happening on the steps of the Cathedral.

I thought it was the old tradition under which a young man who is not married by a certain age is made to sweep the steps of the Church. As I got closer, it looked more like a fight. Police sirens started to converge and I saw swastikas painted on the Cathedral. Around five or six black clad men with armbands were being held, none too gently, by citizens while others were trying to wipe away the still wet paint. The police showed up and efficiently took those black clad men away as the crowd shouted at them.

The next morning I walked by the Cathedral and there was no sign that anything had happened. I asked about this at work that day and was told those men were lucky not to have been injured. He said such things were forbidden for good reason and everyone agreed. That many would not stand idly by. This was about five years after reunification began and he blamed the East Germans.

My point with this anecdote is that many Germans at that time, took a dim view of neo-nazis and Holocaust denial and I'm glad to see that this view seems to be intact.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. So important to respond strongly when the Reich Wing pulls crap.

I was so happy to see the strong push back against the tiki torch mob.

[Yonnie3]

12. It was a quick response.

It was unplanned and social media helped it happen.

I, perhaps wrongly, wish 8/11 and 12 had happened somewhere other than here.

[Behind the Aegis]

13. I missed this thread earlier...my pictures from Berlin this October: The Jewish memorial

[dixiegrrrrl]

14. What do those blocks represent?

I assume it is representative of a large number of people? can't see if there is any inscribing...

[Behind the Aegis]

15. It is left open to interpretation.

There is nothing inscribed. There is also nothing, not even a sign, for the "memorial" for gay men murdered, which is across the street. The memorial for the Jews murdered is an abstract. I tis interesting in the size, but IMO there are some conceptual issues because I don't feel it really represents the horror of the number or the situation. There is a small plaque explaining this is a memorial and should be treated as such, but it is on the ground and most people never see it, so I saw kids jumping from block to block and people sitting on them, as well.