German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/72,
pp. 8421-8422.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
The Holodomor – Ukrainian for “mass murder by starvation” –
is one of the 20th Century’s greatest crimes against humanity. Lenin
in 1922 had already announced it: We will even use terror, including economic
terror. – Which Stalin then executed in incomprehensible brutality. The
forcibly collectivized Kulaks, those independent farmers hated by the
Communists, were in 1932-33 throughout the Soviet Union obligated to
unfulfillable deliveries. He who did not submit, armed commandos took away from
him the entire harvest and all food stores. The Ukraine, as the granary of
Europe, was especially hard hit because there Stalin wanted to eliminate
national consciousness. The country was blockaded, rail traffic was no longer
allowed. Up to four million people were given up to certain death by
starvation.
When we today remember these monstrous crimes, then there
needs be primarily one lesson: The socialist ideology with its hatred of
individuality and freedom, with its levelling terror and its madness of being
able to create a new man, is to be rejected and fought wherever in new guise it
raises its hideous head. That pertains to the national socialist variant, yet
also plainly pertains to the international variant which hides behind fine
sounding words like “justice” and “progress”.
The AfD delegation briefed on the Holodomor here in the
German Bundestag already three years ago. At that time, scarcely anyone was
interested. In regards to crimes in communist spheres of power, our
left-leaning political establishment has for decades preferred to look away.
Certainly the remembrance of the crimes of the SED does not come forward
fittingly; the monument is still not built. The leader engaged for the Hohenschönhaus
memorial was elegantly gotten rid of, etc.
Why now is remembrance of the Holodomor so important to
these same political forces? We fear, for crooked reasons. In your speeches
here and in other announcements occur a strong parallelization and
identification [Ineinssetzung] of the
historical event with the present war of Russia against the Ukraine. The Heidelberg
historian Tanya Penter speaks in Spiegel
quite correctly of an “unfortunate interweaving of separate historical contexts”
in your motion [Drucksache 20/4681]
and the genocide researcher Kristin Platt warned in Deutschlandfunk Kultur: One must deal very carefully with the term
genocide or Völkermord; for certainly
in a war it will be frequently used strategically and also as propaganda. Besides,
Vladimir Putin has cited the Ukraine for the Völkermord of Russians in the eastern provinces. We here in the
West should not mirror the immoderation of such accusations, ladies and
gentlemen.
Yet German politics as usual is intoxicated to exaltation in
its moralizing superiority. Foreign Minister Baerbock now even speaks in
regards Russia’s conduct of the war, which so far according to UN statistics
has claimed around 6,500 civilian victims, of a break with civilization. – An expression
which otherwise has been reserved for the Holocaust. Frau Baerbock – wherever she
is today – certainly demonstrates a wise statesmanship in a crisis not in
maximum rhetorical escalation but with measure and circumspection [Maß und Umsicht] in regards the peace
which she should keep in view. She is strikingly lacking in both.
In conclusion, I want to correct one error of yours: The
Ukrainians who now with weapons in hand and perhaps with the memory of the
Holodomor in heart defend their homeland do not do it for the values of the
international rainbow, for diversity, tolerance and equalization. They do it
for the sovereignty of their country, for the preservation of their people and
of their culture. They therein have our solidarity. The Holodomor is to be
remembered,
Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Herr colleague, your speaking time is at an end.
but the instrumentalization of history which you are pushing, we reject.
Lamya Kaddor (Greens): For you, nothing is too harmful!
Many thanks.
Britta Haßelmann
(Greens): For you, nothing is too harmful! Respect – not a chance!
[trans: tem]
