Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Reagan Not Popular with Krauts

A poll for the German news magazine Focus found last month that a majority of Germans -- 52 percent -- would oppose a Reagan street in Berlin while 42 percent would support it.

Normally this would tick me off. After all, Reagan more than anyone else was instrumental in the demise of communism, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, and the reuniting of East and West Germany.

But think about it... If the people who came up with the idea of Auschwitz and Treblinka... And enthusiastically supported the rise of a paranoid sadist named Adolf... If this pathetic spawn of Nazis wanted to name a street after me... I'd really have to stop and examine my life.

So I'm really not ticked off about it.

....

2 comments:

Grammy said...

Well aren't you chipper!?!?! I've often wondered what it must be like to be German with that cultural skeleton in your closet. I imagine most every German can trace back to at least one close relative who participated in some way in the holocaust. And some are still living! As Americans we have things in our past that are pretty ugly, but geez-o-pete that Nazi business is so bad, and so close in time. I know all things are new in Christ, but I just wonder how that heritage sits in the heart and how do German school history books treat it?

I also wonder how Japanese people process the Pearl Harbor sanctuary tour. I suspect more Japanese than americans visit it. That was certainly the case when I went.

I just wonder.

Malott said...

Maybe they feel about the Holocaust the way we feel about slavery... "Hey, I didn't own any slaves..." or "Hey, I didn't gas any Jews."

But when a culture feels so strongly about a race of people that it kills men, women, and children... I have to wonder... does that just suddenly "switch off" because you lose a war? I wonder if their country clubs are restricted.