The Yad Vashem Holocaust Authority protests a German parliamentary motion to equate the victims of the Nazis and those of Communism.
In a letter to Angela Merkel, leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev urged reconsideration of a motion equating the Nazi dictatorship and the Communist regime. The motion, entitled "Funding of Memorials of the History of Dictatorships in Germany - A General Concept for a Dignified Commemoration of all Victims of the two German Dictatorships," was submitted by the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union to the Bundestag. The motion, which comes up for vote two days from now, aims to fundamentally change the policy towards memorial museums in Germany dealing with the Nazi period, and is likely to blur the distinction between the crimes of Nazism and those of the communist era.
"If adopted," Shalev wrote, "this policy will eventually lead to obscuring the uniqueness of the Nazi persecution and the minimization of the Holocaust, and will offset much of the German contribution in the fields of Holocaust remembrance and education. The proposed bill is an affront to the historical truth. The crimes of the communist totalitarian regime need to be remembered. This, however, should not lead to a simplification and misrepresentation of the past, which border on historical revisionism. Memory needs to be firmly rooted in an accurate representation of the past. Unless the historical distinctions are upheld, the present motion may contribute to the distortion of the way in which young Germans perceive their past."
In a letter to Angela Merkel, leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev urged reconsideration of a motion equating the Nazi dictatorship and the Communist regime. The motion, entitled "Funding of Memorials of the History of Dictatorships in Germany - A General Concept for a Dignified Commemoration of all Victims of the two German Dictatorships," was submitted by the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union to the Bundestag. The motion, which comes up for vote two days from now, aims to fundamentally change the policy towards memorial museums in Germany dealing with the Nazi period, and is likely to blur the distinction between the crimes of Nazism and those of the communist era.
"If adopted," Shalev wrote, "this policy will eventually lead to obscuring the uniqueness of the Nazi persecution and the minimization of the Holocaust, and will offset much of the German contribution in the fields of Holocaust remembrance and education. The proposed bill is an affront to the historical truth. The crimes of the communist totalitarian regime need to be remembered. This, however, should not lead to a simplification and misrepresentation of the past, which border on historical revisionism. Memory needs to be firmly rooted in an accurate representation of the past. Unless the historical distinctions are upheld, the present motion may contribute to the distortion of the way in which young Germans perceive their past."