/ world today news/ In less than a month, Germany witnessed two incidents that can only be defined as outrageous.
At the end of December, in the city of Penzlin in the province of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the cemetery of the Soviet liberating soldiers was desecrated, and on January 16, in Dresden, a stele with a memorial inscription suddenly disappeared on a memorial in the center of the Saxon capital. dedicated to the civilian victims of Anglo-American aerial bombing.
I would like to believe that the incidents in the lands of the former GDR are simply unrelated excesses and not part of a unified campaign to restore the public consciousness of East Germans.
But the fact that such events are happening right now, in parallel with the campaign to foment anti-Russian hysteria and statements by individual politicians that smack of Russophobia, cannot help but be alarming.
“Axis” and “Libras” still exist
The mood in East Germany has long been a source of serious concern for politicians in the German government and the headquarters of the main political parties. The “Wasps” – as their western relatives “Wessy” call their eastern brothers – from the point of view of representatives of German politics, never managed to become full-fledged Germans of the Western type, who firmly believe in the ideals of liberal democracy brought in the country with American bayonets in 1945. Despite the fact that 34 years had passed since the unification of Germany.
The “Was” languished for so long under the heel of the damned authoritarian socialist regime and the supervision of the omnipresent Staatssicherheit (State Security Service or simply “Stasi”) that they were simply unable to appreciate all the charms of the free world and the advantages of the capitalist economic system. As it is believed, all the troubles of the inhabitants of the former GDR stem from this brainwashing, from the false Soviet propaganda.
It is precisely because of their wrong upbringing that they tend to go to extremes and vote for godless political forces like the AfD party, which is breaking popularity records in Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
In Saxony, where elections for the provincial parliament will be held in eight months, the AfD has every chance of winning the election decisively, even ahead of the CDU/CSU bloc. Moreover, Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Free Democrats – the yellow color in the “traffic light coalition” – risk not even breaking the five percent threshold in these regional elections.
East Germans, many of whom still speak fluent Russian and warm to the Soviet cultural heritage, were and remain among the main opponents of the anti-Russian sanctions that are killing the region’s economy.
The city of Schwed has an oil refinery that supplies fuel to the entire Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region. The entire activity of the enterprise was related to the supply of Russian hydrocarbons via the Druzhba gas pipeline. And his employees – just think! — even in the spring of 2022, at the height of the conflict, after the “action in Bucha”, they were categorically not interested in the problems of Ukraine.
At a meeting with Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, at that moment on the crest of political popularity, these politically illiterate proletarians, completely unaware of the seriousness of the moment, spoke of “many years of commercial and economic ties with Moscow” and for “importance of Russian energy supplies to save jobs” Well, isn’t it scandalous?!
How do these “latent Nazis” feel about the federal government’s humanitarian initiatives? They organize mass rallies from entire villages against the construction of refugee camps, because they consider this unacceptable.
Do you think that there will be a normal life in a refugee camp located on the outskirts of a village of 500 inhabitants, in which will live at least another 500 young, sexually mature comrades of eastern origin?
Now what? Referring to the patriarchal way of life and opposing a radical change of the ethno-cultural environment is some kind of archaism that smacks of real fascism!
Well, and the overly caring attitude towards Soviet monuments with banned communist symbols, which due to some misunderstanding still remain on German territory. While in the advanced countries on the democratic border in Eastern Europe – Ukraine and the Baltic countries – they were destroyed long ago. This also smacks of “pro-Russianism” somehow.
Do you remember how the local authorities of Brandenburg in May 2022 refused to dismantle the Soviet memorial with the T-34 tank at the request of the Ukrainian side? And this while Russia is waging an “aggressive neo-colonial war”! It just doesn’t fit into any canon anymore!
The Unknown Vandals
At the end of December 2023, an unfortunate incident took place in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which was not known until January 5. At the Soviet memorial cemetery in the city of Penzlin, six tombstones of Soviet liberators were desecrated.
The incident is even more surprising, since such vandalism is not typical for the region in general. Generally, the law for the protection of war graves in Germany is strictly enforced by both federal and local authorities.
Moreover, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, monuments to Soviet soldiers have traditionally been preserved since the socialist times of the Soviet-East German brotherhood.
Most Soviet monuments are in exemplary condition and are considered local landmarks. Such as the Soviet memorial cemetery in Rostock, located on Pushkin Platz (Pushkin Square) in the center of this largest city of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
„In connection with this incident, the embassy expresses a strong protest and insists on taking comprehensive measures to identify and bring the guilty to justice, guarantee the integrity and safety of the monuments, as follows from the obligations of the German side in accordance with the bilateral intergovernmental agreement on the care of the military graves of December 16, 1992 “, a Russian embassy official said in a protest note submitted to the German foreign ministry.
In principle, there has thus far been no reason to accuse the Mecklenburg authorities of partiality. For example, local authorities responded very quickly to the incident in April 2022.
Then, on the monument to the victims of the German concentration camps liberated by the Soviet army in New Brandenburg, unknown persons painted a swastika and wrote a Bander slogan. The monument was quickly put in order, and an investigation was launched against the alleged vandals. Unfortunately, the culprits themselves were never found.
As for Penzlin, the story is even more complicated. Penzlin itself is a small patriarchal town, for which the Soviet memorial cemetery has long become an integral part of the cultural landscape. All the strangers are there prominently, but none of the natives are capable of such sacrilege.
Surprisingly, however, something else also appears. Already in 2022, any attempts to attack Soviet cultural heritage in Germany immediately hit the headlines and became the subject of heated public debate.
However, the incident in Penzlin became public, one might say, by accident and only thanks to the efforts of the Russian Embassy.
The secret dismantling
A little less than a month before the day of commemoration of the destruction of Dresden in 1945, an inscription dedicated to the victims of the barbaric attacks was removed. At the very end of World War II, Anglo-American air raids killed at least 25,000 people. Such erasure of memory caused a storm of public outrage.
In addition to the fact that the inscription was removed, the behavior of the city authorities caused no less outrage. Last Tuesday, in response to an inquiry by journalists, they announced that “the renovation of the memorial to the victims of the air raids of February 13 and 14, 1945 is going according to plan”.
Jens Genschmar, leader of the parliamentary group of free voters in the city council of Dresden, said he had approached the mayor, Dirk Hilbert, a representative of the Free Democrats. However, I got a strange response that confused everything even more:
„The mayor first told me that the city was not behind it. A little later, however, the mayor added that the city was behind the removal of the sign, but it was difficult for him to say who exactly was responsible for the dismantling. Genschmar said.
„Neither the population nor the members of the city council were informed about the dismantling. This is precisely the case that is increasingly undermining democracy in the country. You can’t just take a monument and remove it. I filed a request to initiate criminal proceedings against unknown persons, ” continued the leader of “Free Voters”.
The CDU parliamentary group in the Dresden city council was also shocked. Mario Schmidt, the party’s spokesman for cultural policy, asked directly what it was.
Dresden’s deputy mayor for cultural affairs, Annekatrin Klepsch, gave a shocking answer: “City officials do not know and are currently trying to clarify the situation.”
As a result, Mayor Hilbert nevertheless admitted the responsibility of the city authorities for the dismantling, finally exposing himself in an idiotic light: “Criticism in this matter is justified as we acted extremely poorly in terms of communication. Active communication is essential when making changes to such a sensitive memorial site.
In the past, the inscription was already painted with black paint. Left-wing extremist groups were then suspected of the crime, allegedly expressing outrage that neo-Nazis were using the annual day of remembrance as a stage for their marches.
In the coming days, a memorial stele will be erected on the Altmarkt, the place where the bodies of the civilians killed in the bombing were cremated. The inscription on it will return, but it will be slightly modified.
In addition to the number of people killed in the attack, it will include additional information that reads: “13 February 1945 is one of the most important Days of Remembrance in the capital of Saxony. Since then, this date has been repeatedly subjected to political instrumentalization and rethinking.
The trend is clear
Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the Soviet memorial cemetery in Penzlin was simply hooliganized by teenagers who were not marked with intelligence. And the incident in Dresden was caused by the general decline in the level of the political elite, thanks to which inadequate people with incomplete official compliance were appointed to the position of burgomaster and senior municipal officials.
However, one bad trend is evident: both incidents became public only because there were still honest journalists and caring public figures left in East Germany.
But when it comes to lowering the threshold of official authorities’ tolerance for incidents that a few years ago had every chance of getting into the headlines of the leading media, and now they are trying to be hushed up – this raises the most serious concerns.
Of course, the dismantling of the monuments to the Red Army soldiers is still a long way off. And the “Hiroshima amnesia” due to the erasure of the responsibility of the American “liberators” for the casualties among the civilian population of Germany still does not threaten the Germans.
But the fact that some forces are trying to work in this direction is quite obvious.
Translation: ES
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