Language:
German
Year of publication:
2006
Titel der Quelle:
Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung
Angaben zur Quelle:
15 (2006) 113-132
Keywords:
Merker, Paul,
;
Seghers, Anna,
;
Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands
;
Freies Deutschland (Mexico)
;
Jewish refugees
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
Analyzes treatment of Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust in the "Freies Deutschland" and "Demokratische Post", organs of the German communists in Mexican exile. At first the exiles clung to their belief in the opposition of the majority of Germans to Nazism; Anna Seghers argued that to blame the German people as a whole for the persecution was racism, no less than that motivating the persecution. When this position became untenable, the communists chose to see the real Germany as represented by the martyrs of the resistance. Only in late 1942, after Paul Merker arrived in Mexico and assumed the leadership of the Freies Deutschland movement, and when it was no longer possible to ignore the special fate of the Jews, did the movement begin to relate to the Holocaust. Merker, who did not yet realize the dimensions of the extermination, wrote that Jews must be integrated in the free Germany that was to arise after the war, and should be paid reparations; and that Zionist aspirations should be supported. He and other former Mexican exiles were accused in the postwar communist states of having fomented a Zionist conspiracy, and were arrested or executed.
Note:
On the reactions of Jewish and non-Jewish émigrés in Mexico to the antisemitism in Germany and the events of the Holocaust.
URL:
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