When the allied forces began to liberate the concentration camps during World War II, one of the first things they did was to round up German civilians in the surrounding towns and villages and march them through the death facilities, almost literally rubbing their noses in the horror their government had inflicted. Ever since, to its credit, Germany has preserved the camps as reminders of the ultimate example of inhumanity and the promise that it must not be allowed to happen again,
As an attempt to help assimilate Muslim refugees into German society, they are being taken on tours of the camps to help inculcate them the principle that is drummed into Germans that the sort of evil they represent should never happen again.
Unfortunately, as the Washington Post has discovered, the process is not going as well a one might hope.
High rate of anti-Semitism among Muslim refugees
German authorities are discovering that a disquieting degree of anti-Semitism exists among the Muslim migrants they have chosen to take in. Many who have been taken on tours of concentration camps have expressed ambivalence to the Holocaust, and some have even suggested that Hitler was on to something when he set about attempting to exterminate the Jews. Germany has, in effect, out of the best of motives, taken in a significant number of people who sympathize with the Nazis.
Effects of the Arab Israeli conflict
The development should not be any great surprise to anyone.
Jew hatred is used by the media and the education system in many Muslim countries to marinade its people in bigotry. The strategy is, ironically, something the Nazis would have been very familiar with, diverting the attention of individuals to an external enemy to distract them from the inadequacies of the government regime.
The Arab Israeli Conflict is ready made for this idea, to keep hatred of the Jews of Israel at a fever pitch the better to not allow people to realize they are being governed by savages and fools.
What can Germany do about it?
Clearly, the German government has its work cut out for it if it wants to continue accepting more refugees from North Africa and the Middle East.
Educating people in the European culture of freedom and tolerance when they have been raised in societies that value neither of these things will be the work of generations. It is likely too late for the adults, but there may be hope for the children. In any case, Germany and every other European country that is taking refugees are going to have to remake their societies to be ones based not on shared ethnicity but on shared values, and hopefully not the ones that are being imported.
