What do the Brits really think of the Germans? I've heard two contrasting opinions over the last 24 hours.
Firstly, Richard Morrison's column in today's Times, on whether the Brits' perceived anti-German feeling is finally calming, is well worth reading. Sixty years after the war ended, he says, we’re at last embracing the Germans by – among other things – opening German markets in town centres that “could have been downtown Düsseldorf”. Apparently it goes down well:
Even 20 years ago, the very words “German market” would have induced English wits to break into goosesteps, shouts of “vee hev vays of making you drink” and quips about getting to the swimming-pool first. But I saw nothing like that. Just punters eager to sample a different set of yuletide grazing customs.
The second opinion: a man named Noah Klieger, a Holocaust survivor, who I went to hear speak last night in an event to mark the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Klieger was born in Strasbourg, ended up in Auschwitz, lived through its evacuation and escaped on a boat to Palestine by the skin of his teeth after being stranded in the sea off the coast off France. I asked him why we never hear stories like his on the British side of the Channel, and why the British think it was easy after the Holocaust for Jews to settle in Palestine – which, according to most presumptions, was a compensation present from Europe to the Jews. (His story shows this is false.) His answer? The British can’t properly empathise with the victims of the German past. They weren’t occupied by the Nazis, didn’t suffer in the war as much as others did, haven’t marginalised Holocaust deniers enough and couldn’t be bothered to sacrifice their relations with oil-rich states for the sake of one small people looking for refuge.In other words, the British don’t hate the Germans enough. Who do we believe? A British journalist who thinks the “virulent antiforeigner tone in some papers is more hysterical than anything the British press produced in the summer of 1914”, or an 81-year-old Holocaust survivor who lived through Auschwitz, the death marches and the clandestine exodus to Palestine?
PS For those of you still interested in the state elections round here – and the star ratings you've given my posts suggest there aren't many of you – still no one can agree on who to form coalitions with, and the farce is going on and on without much of a solution in sight. Prepare yourselves for a re-election…
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