Holocaust memory takes precedence over other sufferings? Such nonsense

Charlotte Wiedemann is a German journalist and non-fiction author. Her latest book is called “Understanding the Pain of Others”. I fully agree with this suggestion. Wiedemann writes: “The victims of German colonialism are estimated at up to a million; that for them there is no proper commemoration, no place of respect..."

Yes, and that's where the problem starts. Because I expected the sentence construction to go something like this: “…is an expression of a blind spot in our history; an insult to every person from the Global South; unworthy of a civilized country; a shame."

But the sentence structure does not go on like this, but like this: "... cannot be excused by giving priority to Holocaust remembrance." Excuse me? Who has ever justified the lack of a memorial for the victims of German colonialism with the "priority of Holocaust remembrance"? No one. That would also be obscene.

But even more obscene is the insinuation that there is a competition between memories and that “Holocaust memory” is misused “to degrade other sufferings” – Wiedemann mentions the victims of German colonialism, the starvation of Russian prisoners of war and the racist persecution of the Roma. That is and never was the case.

Because Wiedemann's father was a Nazi and she worked for many years in the Muslim world, Wiedemann feels called upon to teach Germans about the right way to remember. And so the subtitle of her book is “Holocaust and World Memory”. We Germans, we read there, "have to learn that in a globalized world, the annihilation of the Jews and Israel are viewed from different perspectives." In other words: Almost everywhere in the world, what people like Wiedemann's father did doesn't seem as bad as we do.

You don't have to read Wiedemann's book to see that. I remember years ago the guard at Herzliya Beach in Israel greeting us: “Don't think I'm condemning you for murdering the Jews. On the contrary. As an Arab, I admire the Germans for that. But we screwed it up.” Smiled and shouldered the Uzi. Jewish children romped around on the beach, whom he was supposed to protect from Arab terrorists.

"Let others speak of their shame," Bertolt Brecht once wrote, "I speak of mine." A good principle that the communist BB too seldom adhered to. And to which the Linke Wiedemann does not adhere either.

On November 9, 2022 of all days, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, she wanted to present her thesis on the abuse of the Shoah and the suffering of the Palestinians in Tel Aviv together with the Goethe-Institut and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation - one could also say: Jews as Perpetrators – address. It's not like the Holocaust is being used to distract from the "pain of others", no matter how often that is claimed. Rather, Wiedemann and Co. want to use the pain of others to distract from anti-Semitism in Germany – from our shame and theirs.