Time’s natural apathy raises a smile. Live goes on, and Polish youths have the right to enjoy American fast food, even if they live near the high temple of murder and torture. Auschwitz wasn’t another planet, but right here. You could see it from the neighbor’s window. [...]
It is hard not to identify with the anger and resentment among Poles over their country’s becoming synonymous with extermination camps, and their justified fight to be precise with the terminology: These were German extermination camps in occupied Poland. It is historically unfair that the Poles, whose country was annexed by the Nazis and effectively dismantled, are forced to bear the guilt that is Germany’s and the hatred and disgust of Israelis and the entire world, all the more so given the cultural romance between Israel and Germany.
The evolution of historical memory is fascinating. The Nazis’ decision to build extermination camps in occupied Poland paid off double. They physically kept the extermination enterprise away from their own soil, and, in the end, also the enterprise of remembrance of the extermination. It is clear how this serves the Germans, but why does Israel collaborate with this historical manipulation?
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