Sajakkini

Josh Hong

On the day the two Germanys became united, I was the only person who went euphoric in the house - the rest of my Malaysian housemates in London simply couldn’t care less. Watching the live coverage of the reunification celebration at the Brandenburg Gate on October 3, 1990, with a can of German beer in hand, I nearly wanted to ode to joy, as the background music, written by Friedrich Schiller and composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, was being played.

It was a reunification that manifested the spirit of freedom and joy - freedom from the Communist yoke, and joy for the German nation that had stood divided for four decades. Most important of all, it was a reunification eagerly and willingly sought by the East Germans, not by coercion of their brethren from the west (eh, I am not referring to the sabre-rattling China vis à vis Taiwan here.)

But not all Europeans were enthused by the prospects of a newly united Germany. The Poles were sceptical, Mikhail Gorbachev found the Wessi’s takeover of the Ossi abhorrent, and Francois Mitterrand was reputed to say: “We cannot declare war on Germany to prevent her reunification.”

JOSH HONG acquired the peculiar habit of reading too much into news as early as when he was a teen. Constantly alarmed by the unofficial divide-and-rule policy of the major dailies in Malaysia, he hopes to bridge the gaps between different ethnic groups the best he can. He appreciates the existence of various races as a most gracious gift of God, and thanks Samuel P Huntington for strengthening his will to fight against hegemony of all kinds.

Margaret Thatcher, whose premiership demised soon after Helmut Kohl became the Reunification Chancellor, was particularly circumspect about another Teutonic dominance that could upset the equilibrium of Europe, suggesting it as a new German Question.

Maggie was, in actual fact, speaking the minds of millions of British (or, to be precise: the English). An old English couple, who remain very close friends of mine till this very day, learnt with deep disappointment of my decision to choose the German language over French.

“Well, I can never forget Coventry and the London Blitz”, muttered the wife.

Praiseworthy determination

If the loss of an empire is a topic most shunned by the Brits, their ‘victory’ over Nazi Germany in contrast re-affirms the independence as well as the fortitude of the British Isles. Never mind the humiliation of Lieutenant-General Arthur Ernest Percival, who surrendered Singapore and subjected the Malayan people to three years and eight months of brutal Japanese rule, and forget about the fact that Australia granted £A25 million to the United Kingdom in 1947 as the UK was labouring under great difficulties in the wake of the Pacific war, the British would always delve on the issue of World War II with an overemphasis on the Third Reich and its fall.

It is true that Germany triggered the First World War, and co-perpetrated the second. However, it is beyond dispute that, in sharp contrast to Japan, the country has since been seizing every opportunity possible to atone for the atrocities committed by the Führer.

The determination of the Germans to root out the ghost of Nazism is indeed praiseworthy. The ignominious motto ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (freedom through labour) at Auschwitz has long been replaced with the self-reflecting ‘Erinnern Macht Frei’ (freedom through remembrance) for the Germans who are honest about the past.

In September 1997, I went on a three-week German language course in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, a small town bordering Poland. To my disbelief, it started with a detailed introduction on the history of Nazi Germany, and the three German teachers took turns to explain at lengths the origins and the consequences of the Third Reich. I detected neither embarrassment nor humiliation on their faces, but humility and dignity.

The whole class was more surprised when the entire teaching team apologized to a Nigerian student, whose African hair and braids had resulted in her being taunted by some jobless German youths in the town, saying, “Dealing with our Nazi past is an on-going project. It could take generations, if not more.”

As I was visiting Auschwitz on an autumn day in 1999, a group of German kids were following behind, listening attentively to a lecture given by a Polish narrator in his heavily accented German. When he stopped talking, one could almost hear a pin drop.

Old wounds reopen

Now, compared this sheer honesty of the Germans to the dodging of colonialism of the British, the denial of the Nanking Massacre of the Japanese, and the justification for the invasion of Tibet of the Chinese.

Some of my friends still think it was the German technology, the picturesque Bavarian landscape and the wheat beer that turned me into a Germanophile. But it is really much more than that.

As the world gathered together to remember the Auschwitz liberation of 60 years ago last week, the old wounds that were once healed (or thought to have been healed) were reopened. Who was the one beating his chest? Again, the little Englander.

When Prince Harry of Britain wore a Nazi uniform to a fancy-dress party recently, he was sharply reprimanded. His un-princely conduct only goes to show the extent to which the British public has trivialized the suffering of the victims under Nazi rule - the Gypsies, the Jews, the homosexuals, the disabled, the mentally retarded, as well as scores of others. Prince Harry has also insulted the Germans who are serious about the history of the Holocaust.

When Franco Frattini, the European Union’s commissioner for justice and home affairs, proposed that the EU should outlaw and forbid very clearly Nazi symbols, the Economist went fidgety, arguing that such measure would ‘redefine Nazism as a European tragedy, rather than a tragedy visited on Europe by Germans’.

What the Economist was held back from saying was that a ban on Nazi insignias even in the UK would perhaps make the British ‘victory’ less glorious, which would have severe implications for the modern British identity. Eurostar may have been in operation for nearly a decade, but the English Channel has always been wider than the Atlantic.

When Matthias Matussek, the London correspondent for Der Spiegel suggested that the British had been “focusing too much on their own triumph and too little on the history of the victims… it now appears that the British have a greater problem with the past than the Germans”, the Economist finds his statement nothing but ‘wishful thinking’.

Powerfully enigmatic

I as someone who spent a good part of my life in the UK can indeed testify that the Brits are indeed too unhealthily obsessed by the war.

Contrary to what the Economist argues, xenophobia is increasingly a worldwide phenomenon, which renders a ban on Nazi symbols imperative. Despite that the modern-days anti-Semitism has different origins and takes different forms, it is not to be denied that the Nazi Swastika remains powerfully and deviously enigmatic to many a white supremacist across Europe and the United States. Therefore, for the Economist to say that ‘Nazi symbols and the memories of fascism and communism resonate differently in different countries… each country deals with them as it sees fit, which is as it should be’, is nothing but a state of denial and self-righteousness.

In Malaysia, I have on quite a few occasions come across the Nazi Swastika on cars driven by Muslims. I was thoroughly flabbergasted. Is it not plain simple to understand that the Jews who died in the Auschwitz or the Dachau concentration camp were totally innocent of the crimes against the Palestinians exacted by the Israeli state of today?

(And for that matter, I would be least at ease with the Rising Sun Flag of Japan and the pictures of Osama bin Laden being held high in Malaysia also, and one knows why.)

In Asia, Japan finds it hard to win friends because of its bad fences. But have Germany’s good fences made trusting neighbours? Well, not quite. At least not Prince Harry and the Economist.

Good fences, good neighbours?