Cleansing

IT WAS MERELY curious at first that Germans got so upset about Scientology and took the movement, which counts the likes of Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its adherents, to court. But, as Richard Cohen noted in The Washington Post, concern about a cult-like organization that puts a premium on raising funds from its members has gone to an extreme. Two of the country's states have now put in force provisions that bar Scientologists from entering the civil service. Scientologists took out a distasteful full-page ad in The New York Times, that, predictably, drew a parallel between the virtual outlawing of their “church” and the Nazis'treatment of the Jews. Despite the obvious hyperbole and hysteria of the message, the German people's dark past grants the allegations a veneer of credibility. Is there something “inherently spooky” about the Germans, as Cohen puts it?

Daniel Goldhagen suggested as much in his study of the role of ordinary Germans in the persecution of the Jews. While historians disagree about the ultimate merits of Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, the author did clearly demonstrate that the killing of Jews was not perpetrated only by an upper echelon of Nazi officials, but enjoyed the active support and participation of average German men and women who apparently joined in the slaughter with relish. Goldhagen argues that a unique strain of “exterminationist anti-Semitism” is deeply embedded in the German soul and culture, and that the Holocaust, in a sense, was bound to happen there.

However, even as there are troubling signs of the reemergence of the spirit that once gave birth to Nazi terror—Holocaust revisionism; violence against immigrants, trends which, it should be noted, aren't limited to Germany—it would seem wrong to assume that there is something inherently evil in being German. Christians, of course, recognize the potential for evil in all of us. Historical circumstances, including Christian anti-Semitism, and a host of intangibles conspired to allow Hitler's emergence, but men and women in any time and place have free will. Barring extreme cases, indulgence in murderous rage or slipping into complicity of whatever nature is preceded by a moment of choice.

Pope John Paul II held up two Germans last summer who turned the other way, when he beatified two Catholic priests, Bernhard Lichtenberg and Karl Reisner, during a ceremony in Berlin's Olympic Stadium. Upon his arrest in 1941, Lichtenberg, who frequently angered Nazi officials with outspoken criticism of their anti-Jewish policies, was described by an official as “a fanatic who admits to having prayed for Jews publicly.” Lichtenberg died on his way to the Dachau concentration camp, where Father Leisner was ordained and said his one and only Mass. He too had dared to criticize Hitler publicly.

Such heroic testimony—and there are of course others who were willing to risk all in the service of truth—is a saving grace for the German people, past and present; it revitalizes the nation and puts the lie to the notion that there is something inherently evil in the German soul.

It is clear, in addition, that a process of collective acknowledgment of misdeeds and subsequent repentance have been vital for the psychological and political regeneration of the German nation, a pre-condition, one could argue, for being welcomed again in the family of nations. This should be instructive for a country desperate for international respect and acceptance, but as yet unwilling to come to terms with its own dark history—Turkey.

Turks recently marked the 58th anniversary of the death of Attaturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Not untypically, a tribute to the modernizer by scholar Bernard Lewis in The Wall Street Journal—praising the leader's advances with regard to the emancipation of women and the country's gradual move toward democratic rule—failed to mention the Armenian holocaust just before and during World War I in which at least as many as 1.5 million Armenians perished. The West, eager to pull Turkey into its economic and military sphere, turns a blind eye to that stain on its history. Even Israel, anxious not to offend now that its planes are allowed to use Turkish airspace, is publicly silent about the destruction of a people united to Jews in the spirit of suffering.

Turkey only stands to benefit by a soul-cleansing look at its past. Undoubtedly, untold heroes will come to the fore, leaders of the Armenian Orthodox community as well as Muslim clerics who dared to defy official policy. Recognition of their sacrifices and acknowledgment of the wrongs they laid their lives down to correct will make fruitful the modern Turkish experiment and put the lie to another myth of another people destined for evil.

— JK