On anniversary, Nuremberg praised for confronting Nazi past: When Will Japan Learn from History?

On anniversary, Nuremberg praised for confronting Nazi past
When Will Japan Learn from History?

Sat Nov 19, 4:20 PM ET

NUREMBERG, Germany (AFP) - Few cities are saddled with a historical
legacy as painful as that of Nuremberg, Germany and few have done as
much to exorcise the ghosts of their past.
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This southern city is linked like hardly any other to the Nazis'
delusions of grandeur, their poisonous mix of nationalism, historical
manipulation and virulent anti-Semitism, and their calamitous downfall.

It hosted the giant Nazi party rallies from 1927, even before Hitler
rose to power five years later, in which hundreds of thousands swore
allegiance to him and staged bizarre displays of purported racial
superiority.

This was also the city that gave its name to the 1935 "race laws" that
stripped Jewish citizens of their rights, banned intermarriage with
"Aryans" and laid the groundwork for their systematic extermination.

And it was the home of "Der Stuermer" weekly magazine which whipped up
hatred against Jews with vicious articles and caricatures.

After intense Allied bombing during World War II, the American GIs
arrived amid the smoking ruins and within seven months came the start of
the Nuremberg Trials before an international military court, on November
20, 1945.

The attempt by the Allies to provide some measure of justice for the
victims of the war and the Holocaust put the city on a long road to
normalcy, in which citizens gradually took responsibility for their
massive historical burden.

"There is no other German city that has worked through its Nazi past as
intensively," local Jewish community leader Arno Hamburger, 82, said.

Hamburger escaped Nazi Nuremberg with his life in 1939 and went to
Palestine, only to return in 1945 as a British soldier just weeks after
the city was captured by the Allies.

He served as an interpreter during the Nuremberg Trials, which exposed
the Nazi crimes to the world's horror.

Hamburger acknowledged it had required decades for the city to take an
unflinching look at the past due to a mix of shame and preoccupation
with the task of reconstruction.

"In the first years after World War II, the citizens and the conquerors
of the city had other concerns. The city was completely destroyed, the
citizens had to recover," he said.

"Of course the interest in the trials was also greater abroad than in
Germany. People were struggling to survive."

Current mayor Ulrich Maly, who has won praise throughout the country for
his leadership in coping with the weight of the city's history, said
that fostering historical accountability was always an uphill battle.

"The generation directly affected by the war must have thought, 'let us
make these ruins disappear as quickly as possible'," he said.

"We are now helping the Nurembergers deal with their past."

Those efforts included the opening in 2001 of an impressive modern
museum on the Third Reich at the former Nazi party rallying grounds.

The interactive exhibit, which has already attracted 750,000 visitors,
covers the period from the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 to the Nuremberg
Trials complete with films from the era, artifacts, survivors' accounts
and private photo albums.

The rallying grounds themselves are now an eerie scene of crumbling
facades, man-made ponds and inline skaters taking advantage of the
massive open spaces designed to make individual Germans feel small in
the face of the greatness of the Nazi cause.

A new stadium that will be used for next year's soccer World Cup stands
just opposite the Zeppelin fields where hundreds of thousands cheered
Hitler as he shouted from the still-intact tribune, designed by Hitler's
favorite architect Albert Speer to resemble the ancient Pergamon Altar.

The gigantic horse-shoe shaped Congress Hall, resembling Rome's
Colosseum, is used mainly for storage, including the stands for the
city's renowned historic Christmas market, held every year in the
beautifully reconstructed Old Town.

And Nuremberg is weighing plans to create a full-scale museum at the
courthouse where the trials took place, which received some 13,500
visitors last year.

The city has also turned its attention to contemporary civil justice
issues and received international recognition for its efforts, claiming
the 2000 UNESCO prize for human rights education -- the only time a city
has won the award.
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