Читать книгу Museum Transformations - Группа авторов - Страница 30

In the former GDR, the situation was different. There was no long process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past); instead, the government initially pursued radical “de-Nazification” measures. After that, it appeared as though all Nazis had either moved to the West or turned into communists. In reality, the official antifascist ideology made it easy for former Nazis and their descendants to project their feelings of guilt onto West German society. In contrast to the commemoration culture that had developed over decades in West German society, East Germany had a centralized state policy of public commemoration that did not change much until the fall of the regime. In the GDR, Holocaust commemoration was linked to the ideological image of the communist resistance fighters; therefore the sites of former concentration camps like Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen were regularly used for ceremonies and rituals to strengthen state ideology. But the fate of the murdered Jews was hardly remembered. In addition, the perspective of teaching the Holocaust only within the theoretical framework of class struggle did not leave room for understanding the special nature of the racist Nazi ideology that had targeted the Jews first and foremost. The antifascist and anticapitalist ideology encompassed anti-Semitic stereotypes, and fostered hostile feelings toward the state of Israel. This changed only during the very last years of the GDR, when the government under Erich Honecker opened up to the Jewish community and to Israel, mainly with the aim of gaining support from the United States for its ruined economy.