Moral Destitution and the Absolution of Time

"Germans are the only people in the world who plant a monument of shame in the heart of the capital."
"[Germany needs to perform a] 180-degree turnaround [in remembering its past, to produce an exorcism of penance for the Holocaust]."
"This laughable policy of coming to terms with the past is crippling us. There were no German victims any more, only German perpetrators."
"[Any suggestion I have criticized the Holocaust memorial is] a malicious and deliberately denigratory interpretation of what I actually said. In my Dresden speech I wanted to ask how we Germans look at our history."
Bjorn Hocke, history teacher, Bornhagen local chief, Alternative for Germany [AfD]

Björn Höcke (centre) marches with AfD members in Raguhn (Getty)

The German protest party that is appealing to Germans to reject the presence of foreign refugees and migrants flooding into the country and welcomed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel is described as a 'far-right' party, grooming itself on the fascistic model of Nazi Germany, responsible for the mass murder of millions of Jews, political prisoners, Roma, homosexuals and communists. It pains this man that a memorial to the Holocaust has been erected in Berlin, the capital of his nation. Most memorials cater to pride in one's country; this one has been built to mourn the depths of human depravity that Germany succumbed to.

Agreed, it is a tediously tiresome thing to keep recalling the death camps, slave labour, the occupation of the German military throughout the conquered states of Europe, the conflict, the losses that humanity suffered, all because one country was overtaken by a malignant demagogue who visualized Germany as a conquering nation of superheroes ruling the world; judge and executioner of those the Third Reich deemed degraded and disposable, the mentally defective, the crippled, those infected with a nuisance ideology; above all those who could be identified as members of the Jewish race, as though nature herself differentiated her racialized humans.

"We wanted to remind Mr. Hocke that he can turn German history however much he likes, it doesn't change." 
"[People like Mr. Hocke deserve] not one millimeter [of attention or trust]."
"He broke the mother of all taboos, he challenged the founding narrative of modern Germany and he got away with it."
"We are doing our neighbourly duty. We hope he enjoys the view every day when he looks out the window."
Philipp Ruch, co-founder, Center for Political Beauty artist collective, Berlin 

A version of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial built by a German political art group next to the home of Björn Höcke. Photograph: Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

Mr. Ruch and his group set out to teach Mr. Hocke a bit of a lesson on his home turf, the village of Bornhagen, a peaceful location where residents live in social harmony, irrespective of their ideological beliefs. And for the most part accepting the shame that Germany earned in 1939-45 with its wartime agenda of a Thousand-Year Reich, its pride in the purity of the German volk, and its contempt for the lesser mortals in Europe, the despicable halt and the lame, its jetsam and flotsam of humanity cluttering the landscape begging for the Final Solution. In Bornhagen, supporters of Germany's Greens make no social distinction between themselves and supporters of the AfD: "We don't talk about politics", said one villager.

It is Mr. Hocke's misfortune that it grieves him that his beloved Germany holds itself to account for its terrible misdeeds, for he feels that there has been shame and repentance enough, that Germans need to feel pride in themselves, their culture, their heritage, now being assailed by the presence of an alien culture, heritage and religion, one which, like Nazi Germany itself, has expressed its sacred duty to conquer the world with another ideology, Islamofascism. Mr. Hocke feels horrified that what fascist Germany imposed on others, Islam is now imposing on all; its very own conquest by stealth of migration.

The irony here is that Germany did make its 180-degree turn. Reluctantly at first, it has taken to doing its penance. The Jewish "never to forget" has become the German obligation taken on itself, its Scarlet Letter of unforgivable shame in being complicit to unimaginable horrors in the desecration of human life. In its turn-about, it has felt an obligation to correct its collective assault against humanity by opening its doors wide in accepting a flood of migrants who will never -- as the Jews before them became fully integrated, proud of their German-Jewishness -- integrate fully into the prevailing culture, justice and social contract.

Muslims now comprise a significant proportion of the German population, with well over six million now resident in the country; significant enough in that this is a number replicating Jews exterminated throughout Europe by the Nazis' Final Solution. The vacuum has been filled. The German artists came to the village and erected a tent, informing neighbours that the tent -- positioned in a garden next to Mr. Hocke's house in the village he calls his "refuge" and "locus of inspiration" -- was preparation for an engagement party. In that tent the artists were busy at work constructing a rebuilt- to-scale Holocaust memorial replicating the Berlin Holocaust Memorial.

The surprise was all Mr. Hocke's, when the tent was taken down, and from his bedroom window he viewed that Holocaust memorial, with the slabs rotated 180 degrees to conform with his earlier message to AfD followers that Germany needed to make a 180-degree turn. Mr. Hocke now refers to the artists as "terrorists", while they name themselves "aggressive humanists", and never the twain shall agree. School classes in the village come to visit the memorial and as they do, far-right opponents slash the car tires outside the site while far-left supporters hold anti-fascist marches.

"We have become the Nazi village", mourned Silvya Rinke, a tour guide and life-long Greens voter. Children now ask, she observed, "why people are being mean to Mr. Hocke. How do you even begin to explain this?" Precisely why it is that the memorial has been placed where it is, counters 30-year-old farmer and site volunteer Susanne Prinz; making people take notice of the presence of the memorial, impacting on their need to take a position on its presence.

"Yes, it's uncomfortable. But then, Germany's history is uncomfortable", she added.