In Hitler's Shadow (aláírt példány) [antikvár]

Introduction OVER SIX DECADES AGO when I was a student, the initial reaction of myself and my Jewish peers to Adolph Hitler was to make jokes about a funny little man, a lunatic with a mustache. No one was prepared to take his bombastic threats seriously— until it was too late. When Yaron Svoray entered the neo-Nazi subculture in the Germany of today, few were taking it seriously. The stirrings of extremism and hatred were decried but all too often accepted. Racist skinhead attacks against foreigners, firebombings, cemetery and synagogue desecrations—these sinister echoes of the past were, as then, written off as the work of elements at the fringes of society. No one thought they were a real threat. Yet the extreme right wing has tried consistently to penetrate the political mainstream of the Federal Republic. Germany is not alone. Headlines from all over the world remind us that hate did not die in the bunker with Hitler. We are experiencing a new era of hate. People concerned about the world they live in must refuse, as did Yaron Svoray, to let these things incubate. From the beginning, I have said that there is no need to pass any new laws for Germany to deal with neo-Nazi terror. The Federal Republic has established the toughest anti-racist and anti-hate laws in Europe. It is a model postwar democracy. What has been lacking until recently is the political will and collective consciousness to deal with the extremist movements and marginalize their ideas. The most important aspect of Svoray's mission as related in In Hitler's Shadow is that it helped force people at the highest levels of the German government to confront a problem too many of them did not want to deal with. One can only hope that ordinary