Just back home from Hannover I happened upon a ralley that we spontaniously joined. I did not know about that ralley but had been talking about this issue a few days ago.
The background:
There have been two Buchenwald concentration camp outpost in Leipzig. To be honest, until today I knew only of one and always thought that's the one. But no. That's been for male forced labourers who had to produce weaponries at Erla Maschienenwerke.
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KZ-Au%C3%9Fenlager_Leipzig-TheklaBut there's been another outpost. That's been for female forced labourers for HASAG (Hugo-Schneider-AG) and had to build weapons and ammunition, and a neighbourinhg house for male forced labourers.
As usual, who fell ill or became too weak to work was transported back to Buchenwald and murdered.
And it's this exact house for female forced labourers that is
being used by neo nazis!!! When I first heard about this I just could not believe that this may be true. I thought I had drastically misunderstood something. But no, it's true. What's even worse is that they are practicing paramilitary trainings and neo nazi bands are invited to play at parties. One is being said to go by the tell-all name "Twelve Holden Years".
And this is where it gets personal. Because that house is just a very short walk away from where I used to study from 1992-1997. I was so close almost every day, lived through difficult but very formative, progressive years. And I knew nothing. Literally nothing. For all those years. Until today.
Therefore this rally turned out to be even more important to me than I anticipated. But it again showed me how ever present the unbelievably inhumane structures were. How it is absolutely impossible not to live in this country and not to have places of institutiomalized nazi crimes near you.
And I am still devastated that neo-nazis are allowed into that house. It's unbeliebable, I find that revolting.
I don't know whether you have heard that recently two Gernan tourists beat up a bouncer from Senegal and he may never walk again.
These two tourists, it turned out were neo nazis from Leipzig. It is absolutely likely that they trained on this very former concentration camp area.
I still cannot believe all this.
But ... that's Saxony. There's a saying, that if it's impossible anywhere in Germany, it's normal here. Politicians, police, intelligence and people are more active fighting and criminalizing anti fashists than neo nazis.
And it's very likely that we may be getting a right winged party that is more than just flirting with fashist legacy elected into state parlianent.
I am so very tired and sick of all this. I mean, it's heavy enough to carry the implicit responsibility to make it better because of all that shit so many years ago. The legacy is omni-present if you open your eyes. That alone is hard to live with, at least for me. But the current devellopments ...
One of my grandfathers was a judge, also during the Nazi years. But my mother tells me she had been told that he had a positive reputation, many people took it as a good sign if they got him. I admit, I never tried to dig deeper, to find documents. Maybe I should. Maybe I should just continue being me.
My other grandfather was a pastor who spoke his mind during service, something the nazis did not like. Once he was led away by GeStaPo, so my father said, never to be seen again. As a kid I once found the document that pronounced him officially dead after the war, because nobody has ever heard anything of him again.
And I know for sure that another distant relative turned into an openly vile anti-semite once he found that the Jews did not convert as he expected them to. That was 1523-45. I cannot bear carrying his name because of that. But I take it as a special responsibility.
