do you want an exception for the children? at what age begins complicity? sophie scholl was 18 when she started resisting the nazis and died when she was 21. shall i exempt those under 18? boys as young as 14 fought and died protecting the german state, some conscripted others volunteered. shall i exempt those under 14?
i’ll excuse everyone 13 and below. there’s still a massive number left i would consider responsible.
Friend, if your ethos results in holding children, literal children, responsible for the crimes of the Third Reich, we may fundamentally disagree about the nature of “responsibility.”
Explain how putting a hotel in a Nazi-built building in 2020 helps the poor innocent youth of the 1930s and 40s.
Millions of children were also slaughtered and burned like yesterday’s trash in Nazi camps.
These towers we are discussing were designed to keep that that process from stopping.
Forgive me if the idea of them going condo brings up a bit of vomit in my mouth.
It…doesn’t? Due in no small part to the rules of causality and time travel, I suppose.
Now, can you explain how that pertains to the issue of holding literal children responsible for the crimes of Nazi Germany?
I think reasonable people can and do disagree about these towers. I was specifically taking issue with your absolute position assigning responsibility for Nazi atrocities. Unlike some, I believe it to be absurd and abhorrent to assign responsibility to children, which I am unwilling to agree to disagree about.
War sucks.
Brother, you said it.
It’s the nature of the totalitarian state that it’s easy to imagine someone who was a toddler in 1933 ending up being so brainwashed over his life that he’d volunteer in 1945. Assigning responsibility (as you’re doing) is different from assigning blame (which I suspect people are interpreting your statement as).
For example, I am not out there “rolling coal” or denying climate change, but being an affluent Westerner of a certain age I do have to take some responsibility for my part in global warming.
Ultras aren’t hooligans, although some hooligans try to present themselves as ultras. Ultras aren’t there for a fight while hooligans are only there to cause trouble.
FC St Pauli are famous for their left wing supporters, nearby Altonaer also have a left wing support. Nazi tourists will be unwelcome there, even without hooligans.
Most of them are, although there are exceptions like the Birmingham Zulus.
i once saw an aussie get laid out in kreuzberg for “jokingly” doing the salute. i think they assumed their “mates” from the hostel would backthem up if they started a fight, not laugh and point out they’d have to admit to a crime if they called the police.
So I wonder if people feel the same way about, say, the Tower of London? These days it’s just a tourist attraction, but for hundreds of years it was the prison the British state kept it’s political prisoners in, right up to and including WW2. People were tortured and executed there, but today people go there to look at the crown jewels.
At a certain point, buildings turn into history, and get used for something else, Europe and Europeans are used to this. Castles and fortifications get repurposed and reused.
The problem is what it is being turned into. The people of Hamburg would have far less of a problem if it was to be turned into a community space, for example. Part of it is gentrification, the current concert venue and art space is for the benefit of local people (including immigrants), while the planned hotel will only benefit the owners of NS Hotel Group.
And potentially inviting Nazi tourists to an area where Antifa are very active is just asking for trouble. Think less Tower of London, and more of a museum about how great the British Monarchy is being put in the Dublin General Post Office.
I am eager for the day when we can have a good wrangle here on the BBS over the repurposing of Trump Tower Hotel, a potent reminder of Trumpism and the end of the American century, into a hog fat rendering plant.
That reminds me…
this is the distinction you’re missing. i offered my lower bound for shared responsibility in the results of the society of which they were part. i’m willing to be convinced the lower bound should be elsewhere. please, name the point and explain why.
Here, @hecep, about a quarter of my family from that generation was killed, variously, in camps, for resisting, and by retaliation/execution squads.
@anon21100188: I don’t mind your argument. It’s a building. Obviously, if it was a “Nazi-themed” resort (which I do not believe it will be) then I could see it as a trivialization of a monstrous ideology and a wretched idea. But if concrete poured for the glory of the third Reich can instead be used for some peaceful purpose that, by its unwarlike mien makes a mockery of Nazi ideology… I like that. I prefer it’s current use, I confess, over making it a ‘design’ hotel, but I don’t think either is an insult to victims insofar as I may presume to speak for them.
Exactly this. I used to be in York quite a bit, and I always really appreciated how they’ve handled the York Castle, site of a Jewish massacre in the 12th century. (Though I gather the memorial plaque was a [shamefully] late addition.)
This particular building has been a problem for as long as I have been in Germany, really. It’s an eyesore that also has the disadvantage of being stubbornly solid. The current development plans have also been hotly contested, as the idea was supposed to be one of “well, the Nazis built this ugly eyesore, so let’s make it something the Nazis will hate.” And you can find much more explicit examples of Nazi architecture being repurposed, such as a Burger King in Nuremberg.
I guess all I want to say is that it isn’t all that done a deal yet, though the current plans are starting to look final. Nor does it seem as callous as many of the knee-jerk reactions paint it. As my last girlfriend was from Hamburg, I ended up seeing a lot of Hamburg Journal on NDR television, and they dedicated a show to this project more than once, so I got to see interviews with the architects, the neighbours, the local artists who would be affected, and so on.
Also…
