Positive Words From Germany's Leader

by Robert B. Goldmann
Special to the Jewish Week

Though it received scant coverage in this country, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's major policy address before a joint session of Congress on Nov. 3 was significant in its references to Israel and the Holocaust.

At the outset of her speech, Merkel referred to the 60-year old German constitution and its statement that "Human dignity shall be inviolable." She then added:

"This was the answer to the catastrophe that was the Second World War, to the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust, to the hate, destruction and annihilation that Germany brought upon Europe and the world. November 9 is just a few days away.

It was on November 9, 1989 that the Berlin Wall fell, and it was on November 1938 that an indelible mark was branded into Germany's memory and Europe's history. On that day the National Socialists destroyed synagogues, setting them on fire, and murdered countless people. It was the beginning of what led to the break with civilization, the Shoah."

And in discussing the Iranian threat, the Chancellor said:

"For me, Israel's security will never be open to negotiation. Not only Israel is threatened but the entire free world. Whoever threatens Israel also threatens us! This is why the free world meets this threat head-on, if necessary with tough economic sanctions…"

Merkel had no political reason to say this. In fact, there is too much silence, even opposition, in much of Europe, when it comes to Jewish concerns and Israel. The German chancellor said it out of personal conviction. Similarly, there was no political interest in her challenging the Pope for re-admitting a Holocaust -denying bishop whom John Paul II had excommunicated to the good graces of the Church. A major segment of Merkel's base in the Christian Democratic Union is Catholic.

What seems to have led to the chancellor's deep personal convictions is, as she indicated in her address to the lawmakers, her upbringing in a Protestant's pastor's home in Communist East Germany. For her, freedom was a discovery. She had experienced its absence, as was her discovery of Jews, whose suffering had been covered up as "victims of Fascism," in the language of the Communists. For the dictatorship behind the Wall, religious and ethnic identity was "verboten" as a matter of ideology. Thus, the Shoah was not the death of Europe's Jewry, but a matter of Fascism as the enemy of Communism.

Merkel's recent re-election as chancellor of Europe's most populous nation and economic leader has much to say to her country and to Europe, to whose union she is irrevocably committed, and to Jews and the Jewish state.

With the exception of a squib in the Wall Street Journal, our major media neglected to report this first appearance of a German chancellor addressing Congress in 40 years. She also had many substantive things to say on world issues: Germany's continuing commitment with more than 4,000 troops in Afghanistan; the fight against terrorism, free trade, the challenges of India and China, and, in very plain words, the urgency of action on climate change.

Too bad that most readers and viewers were denied thus extraordinary event.

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Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization