By Gunnar Schupelius
For seven years, the Bundestag has been calling for an appropriate reminder of the red tyranny in Germany and Europe. But one federal government after the other is delaying and postponing the order with flimsy justifications, says Gunnar Schupelius.
Almost seven years ago, the Bundestag called for a memorial to be built in Berlin to commemorate the victims of communist tyranny in Germany and Europe. It was never built.
Instead, the federal government is now planning a new center to document the crimes of Hitler’s Germany in the Soviet Union during World War II.
With 15,000 square meters of exhibition space and a cost of 155 million euros, this center is planned to be particularly large and expensive.
The “memory of the German responsibility for the terrible Second World War and the consequences of the German occupation rule” should be kept alive, said Chancellor Scholz (SPD).
There is no question that this memory should definitely be kept alive. But does this require a new system of this magnitude? The unprecedented Nazi war of extermination has already been documented in numerous other places, for example in the Topography of Terror, in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and in the House of the Wannsee Conference.
If a Nazi memorial is to be erected after all and a lot of money is released for it, why is the communism memorial stuck? Anyone who asks this question will not get a clear answer. The first decision of the Bundestag for this memorial is dated October 2, 2015. He had no consequences.
Four years later, on December 13, 2020, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group forced a new decision, but the Merkel government left it alone. In March of this year there was another debate in the Bundestag. The CDU and CSU demanded that the memorial be built by 2024, and the AfD even wanted a location not far from the Chancellery decided.
Both motions were rejected by the traffic light coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP. The traffic light coalition also calls for the construction of the memorial, but does not want to set a date. There are still too many details to be clarified, it said.
That sounds like an excuse. And so it was achieved that there is again not a cent and again no date for the construction of the memorial.
In our neighboring countries, such memorials are taken for granted, in Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic and even in Moscow, where since 2017 the “Wall of Mourning” has been dedicated to the victims of the Soviet Gulag.
In the “House of Terror” in Budapest, the atrocities of the fascist regime before 1945 and the communist dictatorship afterwards are compared.
Why are such designs not possible with us? Why is there this procrastination, this reluctance when it comes to remembering the red dictatorships and their victims?
Is Gunnar Schupelius right? Call: 030/2591 73153 or email: [email protected]
