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267 D Chapter Eighty d under The rug Withthe realizationthatHitler’sgiganticshadowstillloomedovertheworldandparticularly in Germany, where he and his minions had so badly disrupted my childhood, adolescence, and family, it did not take me long to realize the full impact of the devastating damage Germans had suffered in the successful but self-crippling act of sweeping their pernicious past undertherug.WhereverIlooked,therewereostensibledisplaysof obscenewealth,bordering on megalomania. This stark materialism, hard to match anywhere else, was totally unsuitable in a nation that had thrown the world into misery.Underneath the thin layer of shining glitter yawned an abyss of blatant spiritual poverty and provincial mediocrity. In all walks of post-war life, old and new Nazis gloated over the fact that the civilized world had, as a consequence of the Iron Curtain separating the free world from Bolshevism and in dire need for West Germany as an ally, hastily sanctioned the past by conveniently “letting bygones be bygones.” Not long after the war, Bavarian Minister-President Franz Josef Strauss was heard to remark that“it was time for the Germans to stop walking about with backs bent by shame overAuschwitz.”Wherever I looked,though,bent backs were extremely hard to find. Hitler’s existence,as well as the war he started,was now well on its way to being written off as a phase, an historic accident, bloodstained maybe, but no better or worse than other historical disasters. The advocates of this eagerly embraced philosophy diligently ignored the fact that no crime becomes any better by comparing it to another crime.A new kind of nationalism and anti-Semitism,hushed up and still a little subdued despite the almost total absence of Jews, was beginning to raise its ugly head. Deeply concerned over this situation, Martin had once more raised a lonely warning voice.He would not let the sins of the past be forgotten, including the part the Church had played in them. In Göttingen, addressing students on the subjects of nationalism and anti-Semitism,he had spoken the following words: The stronger nationalism becomes, the stronger becomes anti-Semitism. Hatred of the Jews is a deep, dark secret, totally different from the hate between nations, which is usually not directed against a suffering individual. And it is also totally different from the hate against foreigners. The Jew is not hated as a foreigner, he is hated as a Jew, and this hate cannot be explained. Because for too long the church went along with practicing or tolerating anti-Semitism instead of fighting it.Those six million are a heavy burden on Christendom and the church, and not just on the Nazi party and the SS and the one mass murderer. The church bears the heaviest burden of guilt because it was aware of what it was doing when it did nothing. ParT Three 268 Anti-Semitism is anti-Christendom,so an anti-Semitic church is an anti-Christian church and as such the most acute threat to the church as a church. It is not the problem for the Jews, but for the Christians, who for centuries did their utmost to propagate xenophobia: hatred of anything and anybody foreign, a term under which falls anti-Semitism. In spite of vile insults and open threats, he never tired of pounding into the minds of those Germans maintaining that they themselves had not participated in crimes,that the worst sin was that of omission, of indifference.Whoever had witnessed wrongdoing without protest was just as guilty as the henchman stringing up innocent victims. The fact that“restitution money”for six million lives had been paid by the Federal Republic of Germany to the State of Israel could never diminish the German guilt by one iota. Almost totally missing from my husband’s life in Wiesbaden was the usual circle of friends. It took a while until I understood that, for a man in his position, a patriarch standing high above the crowd, there seemed room only for admirers in total awe of him, or foes who would stop at nothing when it came to tearing him down. Quick-witted, gregarious, and open by nature, incapable of prejudice, hate, or hostility, Martin felt awkward in the presence of “worshippers”; what he needed were “buddies,” good for exhilarating conversation and juicy debates over a fine cigar or a glass of vodka. Soon after getting established in my new surroundings, I decided that I needed one niche of my life that belonged exclusively to me...

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