German problems with responsibilty

[tuftabis]

In the last edition of a German weekly magazine some of you read, appeared a strange article which is directly playing into the hands of eurosceptics. Into the hands of those who want Poland to play against Germany. Into the hands of those who look for other alliances than Euro-Atlantic one. The article needs no response other than laconic answer reminding some very basic facts. The best one, among those I read, was supplied by an Israeli - the outstanding Shevah Weiss, whom you already know.
I sometimes think - why? Why ruin Europes bright future as it is today? What for? Why inspire feelings of mutual incompatibility and misunderstanding?

„Spiegel” stigmatizes Polish peasants, who were to help in murdering the Jews. I know these people personally. They have saved my life in Borysław. Polish nation may be proud of own peasants – says Israeli diplomat and politician.


Mark of Kain on German forehead
Shevah Weiss, 22.05.2009

Sixty four years have passed since World War II is over.. Absolute majority of today's Germans were born already after the war. So, almost all the nation of Germons has no direct association with national socialism and its crimes. Nonetheless something called historic responsibility exists. Responsibility for the biggest crime in history of mankind - Holocaust – which was done by the Germans.

Make the burden lighter
Unfortunately one may see today that part of German elite have problems coping with the burden of this huge sin, with a mark of Kain engraved on German forehead. From these problems emerge the tendencies to share the blame with members of other nations. To put part of the burden of responsibility on others in order to somewhat lighten Germans' load. The most recent example of such operation is an article in a weekly magazine 'Spiegel' entitled ' The Accomplices. Hitler's European Helpers in Murdering the Jews'.

Such attempts are nothing new. Germans first tried them after the war, and with more intensity in the 80-ties. Then, a group of known German historians begun to 'write history anew': Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber, Michael Stürmer or famous biographer of Hitler - Joachim Fest. Wehrmacht was being justified. Hillgruber was arguing that German civilians were exposed to acts of vengeance: mass murder and collective rapes on women performed by soldiers of Red Army. Similar threads show in the last books by Günter Grass, who lately started to write about German suffering more frequently.
All that affects German identity, mentality and memory and has disturbing political consequences. If not for this trend, Erika Steinbach wouldn't be able to create the influential community of the expelled.
Certainly, I do not want to accuse all Germans here. There are still many liberals , like Joschka Fischer, who perfectly cope with the problem of guilt. I hope that people thinking like him are still in majority in Germany. And that they shape the policy of this country.

Sources of evil
The last events demonstrate however that the sources of evil still exist in German nation, dozing under the surface. In today's times, when world has been immersed in crisis once again, when unemployment reigns, and people are more and more frustrated, from these sources of evil new German nationalism may grow.

Weekly 'Spiegel' wrote that Germans were not alone. Certainly, that they were not ! There were a lot of collaborators in all Europe. Nobody contradicts that. But it was German national socialism which extracted from these people the evil dozing in them. It all happened from an inspiration of Germans on the territories they have occupied. That is why the responsibility weighs exactly on them.
I remind that the majority of Germans voted for NSDAP, and 600 thousand Germans and Austrians directly participated in Holocaust! Furthermore, German nation greatly benefited from Adolph Hitler's depredations. Furniture, paintings, valuables stolen from the victims landed in German houses.
Yet, 'Spiegel' stigmatizes Polish peasants, who were to help murdering Jews.
Unfortunately, I can see here the traditional German sense of superiority and the contempt towards the Poles. Nevertheless, Polish nation may be proud of own peasants! They were decent, diligent and pious people. Many of them are Righteous Among the Nations, honoured by Yad Vashem.

Playing with dolls
Not just Irena Sendler or Władysław Bartoszewski, also many ordinary inhabitants of Polish villages. I know these people personally. Those three families, who have saved us in Borysław. People who had natural human fairness in themselves. While I remind the Germans that if we, Jews, were to them nothing , Poles were sub humans. For concealing a Jew, a erman could land in an arrest, while a Pole was convicted to death. Once again I address the conscience of all Germans of good will. Don't forget about your historic responsibility. Nightmare of the past must be the moral present.

During the war hundreds of thousands of German children played with dolls. And the hair of these dolls were the hair of Jewish children burnt in extermination camps. Something like that may not be simply forgotten.

Shevah Weiss is an Israeli political scientist and a politician . Among other he used to be the Speaker of Knesset, from Israeli Labour Party and Israeli ambassador in Poland.


In Polish: www.rp.pl/artykul/2,309080_Weiss__Znak_Kaina_na_niemieckim_czole_.html

[karl]

A very interesting presentation as presented by Mr. Shevah Weiss. For he is most informed in common subjects as of the war. For it is in the after-the-fact that most people are most informed, for this would then be common knowledge.

What is inside knowledge is what Mr. Weiss is not informed of. For in his summation of supposed information dealing with our government, is gained from one official that no longer holds a post as of Joschka Fischer. Of Herr Fischer, what he knows stays with him and not to be shared to others. For Herr Fischer was and is still in the fold, for as so for the remainder of his life. Any thing else, is to be considered as speculation.

The war is rather historic now, to be reused for information as a prospect of history.

But, as Mr. Weiss has touched upon but not elaborated upon, for the most part, he is not knowledgeable. Is, we do have some very serious situations that are being dealt with that not only are a domestic concern, but a concern to insure these situations are not exported beyond of our borders. But to be kept with surveillance and minimum direct action.

Of recent, due to law change, our military now has option of civil intervention in cases of a situation that becomes a national security concern. And this only with direct order of the Federal Chancellor Office.

With this, is not of shared, but co-operation as need will arise between different agencies of our government. For within the framework of responsibility of each respective department, is the requirement of addressing each situation as it presents in self. If the needs are exceeded by the resources at disposal. Then it is then addressed to the next department of resources.

As of notice, I have refrained from use of our very long German descriptions in the mind of understanding and comprehension to non-German speakers.

Karl

[Pawian]

Hystery about the Spiegel article is really unnecessary. It is true that some Poles actively cooperated with Germans and helped them conduct the annihilation of Jews, while the majority looked on it indifferently.

However, the main suggestion of the article that without such help Germans wouldn`t be able to carry out Holocaust, is a lie. German war machinery was one of the most efficient during WW2, so was their extermination machinery. Everything functioned like in a Swiss watch.
Proverbial German accuracy and perfection of detail didn`t need helpers.

Why are German papers dealing with such stories so often recently? Are they really trying to shift the burden as it is suggested now?

Haven`t they simply come to a conclusion that after years of bashing German nation for WW2 crimes and Holocaust it is time to focus on others as well as on German suffering? Don`t Germans have the right to it?

Read the aftermath article about Polish reactions and especially pay attention to the last paragraph.


A Wave of Outrage
By Jan Puhl
Spiegel Online

5/21/09
Polish media and politicians have sharply criticized this week's SPIEGEL cover story about Hitler's European helpers outside of Germany. They believe the article is part of an attempt by Germans to foist guilt for its own Nazi crimes off on others.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland's former prime minister, has seemed lackluster of late. He has only seldom thrown himself into the ongoing campaign ahead of European Parliament elections in two weeks. Instead of delivering his accustomed tirades against the European Union, he has meekly called on his fellow citizens to go to the polls on June 6. It seemed that he was short on issues.

DER SPIEGEL's current cover: "The Accomplices: Hitler's European Helpers in the Murder of Jews"
Walter Frentz Collection Berlin, BPK, USHMM

DER SPIEGEL's current cover: "The Accomplices: Hitler's European Helpers in the Murder of Jews"
This week, though, Kaczynski has found his old form again -- with the unexpected help of SPIEGEL. "The Germans are attempting to shake off the guilt for a giant crime," he said, commenting on the latest SPIEGEL cover story, " The Dark Continent: Hitler's European Holocaust Helpers."

The feature describes how foreigners aided the Germans during World War II in the killing of 6 million Jews. Some of the accomplices -- who represented a small minority in each of their countries -- were forced into their roles, others denounced Jews in exchange for money. And some shared the Nazi's anti-Semitic beliefs and joined in out of conviction.

The reference to this particular aspect of the Holocaust is seen in Poland as an attempt by "the Germans" to shift the burden for at least part of the responsibility for the mass murder onto others. If Poland allows "such practices" to happen in Germany, Kaczynski added, then his country shouldn't be surprised one day if Berlin demands reparations for the German soldiers who died during the bloody crushing of the Warsaw Uprising.

"They Are Searching for Holocaust Accomplices"

But Kaczynski's outburst is just the crest of a wave of criticism SPIEGEL's cover has unleashed in the Warsaw media. "They are searching for Holocaust accomplices, " asserts the headline in the conservative Rzeczpospolita.

"DER SPIEGEL is accusing Poland and other nations of having assisted in the Holocaust," claims the daily Polska. In the future, the polemic continues, SPIEGEL could come to the conclusion that the Jews, too, assisted -- after all, there were Jewish police in the ghettos who were forced by the Nazis to round up men, women and children for the transports to the concentration camps.

It is particularly hurtful to Poles that SPIEGEL also reported about the so-called "Szmalcownicy, " Poles who revealed their Jewish neighbors to the Nazis or extorted money from Jewish families in hiding in exchange for silence. Sometimes they even did both.

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, an Auschwitz survivor and currently the government official in charge of Polish-German relations, dryly referred to the fact that 7,000 Poles are listed at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial for their efforts to save Jews, compared to only 100 Germans.

"The article confirms the worst fears about the transformation taking shape in German thinking about World War II," writes the conservative journalist Piotr Semka. For years, many Poles have seen a gradual change in the way Germany sees its history -- a transformation, they say, to a victim mentality.

Erika Steinbach as Public Enemy No. 1

As evidence, they site the increasing number of films and books produced in German that address issues like the Allied bombing of German cities and the post-war expulsions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. Recently, for example, a film was released about the Wilhelm Gustloff, a passenger ship overflowing with German refugees that left the port of then-Danzig (Gdansk in today's Poland) and was torpedoed by a Russian submarine. More than 9,000 passengers, mostly women and children, died.
In Poland, Erika Steinbach, the head of Germany's Federation of Expellees, has been long been seen as Public Enemy No. 1. Her project to establish a Center against Expulsion in Berlin -- not far from the Holocaust Memorial --particularly enraged Warsaw. In a few years, the fear seems to be, the majority of Germans might believe that Jews and Germans were the victims of World War II.

"The Germans," the Polish media imputes, are being driven by a collective need to rid themselves of the heavy burden of their history -- or at least to share out their guilt. SPIEGEL cover stories like "The Dark Continent" do not go unnoticed.

The Germans -- so people in Warsaw seem to believe -- are turning to SPIEGEL these days with a sigh of relief. But the magazine is hardly the place to look should the want to be let off the hook. For decades, SPIEGEL has focused sharply on Germany's Nazi crimes. During the last year-and-a-half alone, the magazine has published numerous articles dealing with the subject. The November 2008 feature about Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's "Executioner, " is just one example. In March 2008, a story ran with the headlin "The Perpetrators: Why so Many Germans Became Murderers."

[karl]

Pawian

I do certainly agree with you on this issue of the recent article as presented by Spiegel. Also have I read it, and let it pass as historic information that should be read with understanding. Much as of reading of a school text book.

Spiegel for some years, have presented various articles of very accurate stories of the war years. It is informative and educational. But, not as an intention of creating emotional issues.

For this is the purpose of a news organization, it is to report the news, inform and educate to the reader for their own understanding.

The war years were terrible years and encompassed most all of Europe to the extent of providing the various military colleges of respective militaries. The formulation and execution of each action to successfully accomplish the intended purpose.

The Polish people are guilty of nothing nor of the Polish nation. The very few Polish individuals that were complicit in assisting the Nazi effort, had little choice. They were in the camps and were to die in the end for how ever.

You are correct with your assessment of the operation of the war. The military and civilian authority of the Reich, needed not help in prosecution of the war. What was needed, was workers in the factories for production.

Their is a Psychology of the conquerer over the conquered in war. The Israelis learnt very well the successful process of subjugation of another people. But, they have failed to understand the methodology in the Psychology of once the process of conquering has been realized. It then becomes to the process of:

{submission by creation of harmonious agreement-subjugation by acceptance}

The above is not so difficult to be accomplished. For it is the Psychology of War. For after the tools of weapons have accomplished the purpose of removing from the enemy, the ability to wage further combat. Then the tools of:

{Social Psychology} is placed into action. For these weapon of conquering is of the second stage in the process of subjugation. For it attacks directly against the establish social structure of the enemy nation.

This is the use a tool named: {Harmonious Agreement}, it is the subjugation by acceptance.

It is the use of local/regional and national people in the capacity of leadership. To gain the acceptance of the people to follow the aims and dictates of the new rule. And that is to follow all requirements as establish under the occupation.

In such manner as above, in self, discourages the formation of such undesirable situations to develop as: rebellion/civil violence and disruption of the occupational process.

A clear an concise goal must be and foremost adhered to from the beginning to conclusion of any action as above described.

What is the purpose of the subjugation of this or any nation by means of combat. For once the action is completed, to what ends will then to be followed?

If the desired end results are of assimilation of this population as part and partial of society. Then it must be adhered to with post war care and adjustment in the social sense to that of the conquering nation. To then realize to the conquered population, they are a responsible part of the new society that is now theirs, or a return of their way of life as previously known.

In respect to people as depicted in this article of Spiegel. It is always a mistake to use too large a brush when painting people.

For we have for the most part, several classes of population with different mind-sets as provided by their life experiences and education. And as so, various reactions to their out side world. In as so, of this article.

And yes, I see and know of changes of attitude of those I work with. But, I see no collective endangerment. It is a natural process of each respective generation reacting to the world they live in. Adjusting to the forces they must deal with as a natural form of living.

Our world is a living world, it evolves with change, and to deal with change, we must as individuals change with our environment. We will change rather we wish to or not, it is accomplished by accommodation/assimilation and social collective agreement.

All things are simple, it is people that create the difficulties.

Karl

[kaima]

I just finished a three day hike through part of the Rhein wine area with some German friends and while the ladies retired to their room in the evening I had some time with the television in my room. The Germans are currently celebrating 60 years since the establishment of their constitution or Basic Law, so they are going into a lot of their history of the last century. It is well written up in thier newspapers (Saturday Die Welt, one specific example) and on televison as well.

They had many hours of WW II films and history on TV, a lot that would be familiar to US TV audiences. The stories and films of the death camps went on and on, I didn't watch it all, but kept watching for most of half an hour too see how many 'minutes' they might show those grusome sights. I checked back later channel chasing, and it was for a very, very long time. They covered the Nazi time without mercy and the bombing.

I don't see where they are avoiding the reality as we learned it growing up in America. I don't see denial or avoidance of the topics, the horrors or the war crimes. I haven#'t read the previous posts but just scanned them to assure this commentary is relevant. It is not to deny or comment onthe previous posts, but to present reality and an American sees it today.

I think everyone is happy to be in the EU today and to participate in the mutual peace and prosperity that it is intended to foster.

Kai

[karl]

May 24, 2009 10:50:52 GMT -7 kaima said:

I just finished a three day hike through part of the Rhein wine area with some German friends and while the ladies retired to their room in the evening I had some time with the television in my room. The Germans are currently celebrating 60 years since the establishment of their constitution or Basic Law, so they are going into a lot of their history of the last century. It is well written up in thier newspapers (Saturday Die Welt, one specific example) and on televison as well.

They had many hours of WW II films and history on TV, a lot that would be familiar to US TV audiences. The stories and films of the death camps went on and on, I didn't watch it all, but kept watching for most of half an hour too see how many 'minutes' they might show those grusome sights. I checked back later channel chasing, and it was for a very, very long time. They covered the Nazi time without mercy and the bombing.

I don't see where they are avoiding the reality as we learned it growing up in America. I don't see denial or avoidance of the topics, the horrors or the war crimes. I haven#'t read the previous posts but just scanned them to assure this commentary is relevant. It is not to deny or comment onthe previous posts, but to present reality and an American sees it today.

I think everyone is happy to be in the EU today and to participate in the mutual peace and prosperity that it is intended to foster.

Kai

Kai

It is so good of you to remember of the folks on the forum, whilst on your journeys. For I have been very curious of your revisit to Germany and of your impressions..For I know, you know us all too well for with your both military and living experiences in our country.

Yes, this week end will mark the 60th anniversary of our constitution {23 Mai 1949}. We have had our times, and encumbrances. But, this is our situation, for our difficulties are ours to to solve, not for others.

Of this I will share. For my self, I will say of this: Of during the later year of the war, my self as a child, I was in Dänemark with my two aunties and two female cousins. {the home still stands as part of our property} and under the occupation of the British military. My family, my self, was very well treated, we were very much afraid of the Americans, for of stories we had heard of the shootings of German people by their young solders.

With this as sharing: If it was in this stead, the Russians {Soviets} with their manner of treatment to us, in the stead of the British, my self as a young man, would have been the worse of their troubles, for my hate would have known little respite. For the loss of my country to invaders would have fueled my interest with what ever organization was available for reprisal.

It is good of events to the present.

Karl

[tuftabis]

Hi Kai, and thanks for your impressions from the trip. It is very appreciated and yes, your impressions on easy going people living in Germany, good and happy Europeans, are quite in line with most of the visitors'. Nonetheless the image is not complete without looking at the less bright side which does exist. I'm sure you will read with interest a testimony which probably is not yet characteristc for the ordinary 'bread eaters', nonetheless it is true. Since you have spent in Germany a considarable period of time, you will certainly find familiar tones there.

Conversations with Young German Intellectuals.

Sam Vaknin Ph.D

In in his controversial tome, "Hitler's Willing Executioners", the author, Daniel Goldhagen, posits that the Germans underwent a miraculous transformation in the wake of their devastating defeat in World war II. En masse, they have abandoned their centuries-old rabid, virulent, and ultimately lethal brand of anti-Semitism and anti-Slavism and became docile, altruistic citizens of the New World Order. This unlikely scenario sounds too good to be true because it is far from the truth.

In the last 4 years (starting in late 2003), I have had multiple opportunities to collaborate or hold lengthy conversations with dozens of young German scholars, intellectuals, artists, and budding politicians from across the political and ideological spectrum. As alcohol and mutual acquaintance put them at ease, they all, with one or two exceptions, reverted to shocking form.

Granted, this is far from a representative and statistically-significant sample. It may well mislead me and my readers into stereotypical generalizations. All the same, what these educated Germans in their thirties and forties had to say was both telling and ominous.

All my interlocutors paid lip service by strongly and unequivocally decrying the errant generations of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet, the subtle twist was that they criticized their predecessors for having failed to subjugate Europe, not for having embarked on this inane project in the first place. They also found the Nazi methods employed in the pursuit of Deutschland uber Alles distasteful and vulgar, though not always reprehensible.

Three years ago (in 2004), I dined at length with young political activists and thank tank scholars from a renowned right-of-center foundation (Stifftung). They were well-aware that I am an Israeli and a Jew. The exchange was so disconcerting that moments after we have dispersed, I committed it to paper from still fresh memory. It is typical of conversations I have had also with German left-of-center and centrist intellectuals and professionals.

As we were discussing European Union integration, one of them, an up-and-coming politician in his party, said: "After all, Hitler was the architect of the new Europe". Prompted to elaborate, he went on to say that Hitler had a vision of a united Europe, though under Germany's thumb. "The EU is and always was a German project." - He concluded.

I begged to differ, pointing out the chasm between the German praxis of uniting a land mass by war, genocide, and ethnic cleansing and the French vision of peacefully bringing ever closer the polities that occupy the continent while preserving their integrity and identity.

"There's more to Germany than Hitler." - Commented a German political advisor bitterly - "You constantly harp on this period, but we have a rich history, you know. Germans have been dreaming of European unity for at least a hundred years."

"Who are these 'You' who constantly reduce German history to the Nazi period?" - I enquired, not innocently.

"You," - my interlocutor responded vaguely, sweeping the scenery with an expansive movement of his arm.

"Next you will say that Hitler wasn't such a bad chap after all." - My Slavic wife interjected.

A chorus of well-rehearsed protestations arose: "He was a beast!", "He was a monster!", "The Holocaust was an inexcusable crime against the entire Human Race!" and such. But, to my hypervigilant ears, these slogans sounded mechanical and hollow.

"Hitler did some pretty bad things but also a lot of good. He revived the German economy, for instance." - Reasoned a senior member of the Think Tank.

"Please don't mention the Autobahns!" - I implored him.

"Hitler was not worse than other leaders of his period, like Stalin or Mussolini."

Again I disagreed:

"You cannot compare Hitler and Stalin to any other leader in history, before or after. They were sui generis. Their paranoia-fuelled butchery was a first and hitherto a lonely case in the annals of Mankind. The question that the world is grappling with ever since is how come a nominally civilized nation like Germany gave rise to Hitler, this grotesque apparition, and then proceeded to sacrifice itself to realize his morbid and sick nightmares."

The only woman in our group, a translator, observed resentfully:

"Germans were as much victims of Hitler as the Jews. They, too, were exterminated by a murderous regime."



"The word 'exterminated' is a euphemism for murdered or killed." - I explained to my wife - "Germans cloak reality behind a veil of disorienting and distorting language. The monetary compensation they have paid to the victims of the Holocaust, the greatest sadistic mass murder in history, they call 'Gutwiedermachung', 'making it all well again, restoring'."

I turned to the fuming feminine component of the long-forgotten dinner:

"Germans were not murdered merely because they were Germans. Germans got killed because they elected a deranged idiot to office and then declared war on the rest of the world with the express intention of assassinating tens of millions of people, whole nations, in effect - which they almost succeeded to do in the case of the Jews. You were no more victims than Hitler himself."

"Outrageous!" - Hissed my counterparty - "Not all Germans were Nazis, you know! Hitler took over Germany by force and violence! The Germans didn't want the war, Hitler forced it on them!"

"It sure doesn't look like it in the newsreels that I have seen."

"Propaganda!" - The political advisor pooh-poohed my observation - "What did you expect from this gang of criminals - objective new coverage? The Germans of my grandfather's generation were caught in a trap and couldn't extricate themselves without risking their lives and property. The SS committed atrocities, but the SS was a minuscule portion of the population and was composed of good-for-nothings and ex-convicts. The Wehrmacht fought honorably. Germans suffered greatly during the war. The Allies bombed our cities indiscriminately with the express intent of causing as many civilian casualties as possible, you know. But this kind of misbehavior is not considered a war crime because it was perpetrated against Germans."

"They must have been imitating the honorable Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe which carpet-bombed Warsaw, Belgrade, and hundreds of other cities in Europe."

Moments of uneasy silence lingered and I ordered the bill.

"It's on me." - Insisted the politician - "Let me defray some of the damage we, Germans, have inflicted upon you in Auschwitz." - He grinned

"Since we are into stereotypes, please don't pay, it would be so un-Jewish of you!" - Contributed the translator.

They all burst into howls of convulsive laughter.

A few months later, I had the occasion to watch the movie "The Fall" with Bruno Ganz in the lead role. It portrays a Hitler that is human and empathic, almost likable.

The repellent conversation I had with these young Germans is only a part of a larger ominous pattern. Germans have a proven history of confusing assertiveness for malignant narcissism. Liberalism and democracy are far from being an entrenched tradition in a nation that gave the world Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler.

As Miklos Haraszti, media freedom representative for the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has finally admitted recently (in August 2007), journalists and opposition members of parliament are regularly harassed by the authorities for unfavorable and investigative reporting, in defiance of the highest courts of the land. The Committee to Protect Journalists concurs. Germany's sprawling and all-pervasive civil service routinely uses red tape and regulatory powers to stifle dissent, punish adversaries of the regime, and reward cronies of the powers-that-be.

The generations of Germans that have grown up in a post Cold War and united country are again imbibing the volatile compound of victimhood and haughtiness. German historians and intellectuals are casting their compatriots as the victims of both Hitler's barbaric regime and the atrocities and war crimes committed by the Allies.

Germany aspires to a "place under the Sun" to properly reflect its economic might and geopolitical importance. But this newfound self-confidence is tainted with the contempt with which Germans hold all others: Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Turks, and assorted minorities. This disdain is well-concealed but it is there, festering. Combined with Germans' resurgent grandiosity and dreams of European domination, Germany is once again a threat to its neighbors and, above all, to itself.

[tuftabis]

May 23, 2009 13:49:56 GMT -7 Pawian said:

Read the aftermath article about Polish reactions and especially pay attention to the last paragraph.


A Wave of Outrage
By Jan Puhl
Spiegel Online

Bo, I would gladly read an aftermath article summing up Polish reactions - but you have cited another Spiegel article, yes?

In my impression there was no 'histeria' as you ( and Die Welt) called it, apart from Jaroslaw Kaczynski's trial to use Spiegel's article politically. Apart from his reaction I read and listened to very reasonable reactions by reasonable people, some of great merit to ongoing Polish-Germna reapproachment In their vast majority they were more or less critical to the article, and the sole fact of having different opinion than the authors does not make them histeric.