Marc Jongen
German War Victims Memorial
German Bundestag, May 14, 2020,
Plenarprotokoll 19/160, pp. 19942-19943
[Marc
Jongen is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western
German state of Baden-Württemberg. He is a philosophy professor. He here
presents an AfD motion (Drucksache 19/19156) proposing the creation of a
memorial dedicated to the German victims of the Second World War.]
Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.
May 8 is the 75th anniversary of the end of
the Second World War. Corona urgencies, fine and well; yet it cannot be that the
German Bundestag cannot find a half hour to discuss the proper relations of a
date so important to remembrance policy.
Since nothing came from the government
coalition, the AfD placed the theme in the orders of business. And in the
meantime, ja, Bündes-president Frank-Walter
Steinmeier, standing lonely as a ghost before the Neue Wache in Berlin, named
May 8, 1945, as a “Day of Liberation”.
Kathrin
Vogler (Linke): He is right!
And he added: “Then we were liberated. Today
we must liberate ourselves.” He then recounted of the “assay of a new
nationalism”, of “partition” and of “hate and incitement”, which were nothing
other than – quote – “the old, evil spirit in new clothes”.
This political exorcism by the
Bündes-president culminated in the adage: If Europe fails, then fails the “never
again”.
Ladies and gentlemen and worthy Herr Bündes-president,
I call out to you from this podium! You are misusing the remembrance of a
historical date to suppress necessary and legitimate debate in the present. Anyone
who defends the nation as the guarantor of democracy, who rejects the
scandalous policy of open borders, or does not want a centralized governing EU
superstate, will be placed by you under the general suspicion of being a Nazi.
Marianne Schieder
(SPD): No, no. That was much more differentiated. You quite well know that!
That is historically and politically perverse,
it divides the society and it is unworthy of a Bündes-president!
Marianne
Schieder (SPD): What you are doing here is unworthy of a member!
And one thing more: You can certainly be of
the opinion, Herr Bündes-president as well as many here in the hall, that
Germany can “be loved only with broken hearts”.
Martin
Rabanus (SPD): Such rubbish!
I say to you: There are Germans – and not a
few – who love their country with full hearts
Armin-Paulus
Hampel (AfD): With whole hearts!
and they will permit no other prescription
from you.
Martin
Rabanus (SPD): Then who wrote down this idiocy?
We come to the key phrase “Day of Liberation”
which Richard
von Weizsäcker
used in his famous speech of 1985, though with more
differentiation. The SPD and the Greens want such a holiday, as one hears; the
Linke also, in the best DDR tradition whereby the day of liberation distracts
from the un-free character of the SED dictatorship.
Yes, of course, ladies and gentlemen, Germany
and the world were liberated on May 8, 1945: From the criminal NS [National
Socialist] regime and from the emergency state of destruction which it
unleashed in Europe. It was without mitigation a day of liberation for those of
groups persecuted by the Nazis: The Jews of Europe, the conquered and abused
neighboring peoples, and for broad portions of our own people as far as they found themselves safe.
However – and this historical ambivalence is
worthy of being endured – it was plainly no liberation for the 2 to 3 million
Germans who in the former German eastern territories died in 1945 on account of
expulsion, flight and deportation. It was
no liberation for the nearly 11 million German prisoners of war, of whom 1.6
million were no more to return and most of the others only after years of inhuman
captivity.
Marianne Schieder
(SPD): That no one has maintained besides you.
And it was definitely no liberation for the
estimated 2 million German women and girls raped after May 8, of whom 10
percent died, a portion of the remaining being severely traumatized.
Kathrin Vogler
(Linke): When you present yourself here as women's rights advocate! That is
really offensive!
For these who were in no way liberated, piety
alone forbids elevating May 8 to a holiday, ladies and gentlemen, and it may then
be that a collective guilt of all Germans, which had massive, cynical
implications, comes to an end. It is in any case contradicted by Richard
von Weizsäcker's dictum – listen, for once – which said, namely: “There is no guilt
or innocence of an entire people. Guilt, like innocence, is personal.”
Allow yourselves therefore to take this
anniversary as an occasion to finally raise up a memorial to the German victims
of the Second World War. Located in the center of the capital city, it should
tell of the several victims’ groups which I have previously named, but also of
the victims of the bomber war, in a documentation center inclusive of the
present-day state of research. A competition should be announced and an experts
committee set up which is legally obligated to the German Bundestag.
This memorial should expressly be not in rivalry
to but in a relation of fulfillment with the existing memorials to the victims
of the NS regime, primarily with that for the murdered Jews of Europe, quite in
the sense of the words of the former Bündes-president Herzog: “…Neither peace
nor reconciliation can be found if the whole history is not presented.”
Marianne Schieder
(SPD): That is what you should do for once, present the whole history!
We are doing that, in contrast to you. We
also believe – I come to conclusion – that the friendship with the former
wartime opponents has in the meantime been sufficiently strengthened so that
this also may pertain to the Germans’ mourning for their own war victims if we
adhere prudently, worthily and coherently to the historical facts. Our motion
demands nothing more and yet nothing less.
Many thanks.
[Translated
by Todd Martin]
