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Home > Publications > Ethnic Cleansing in Germany A Symposium
Ethnic Cleansing in Germany: A Symposium
“It is the hope of the Council, and we believe the hope of the other Americans who share our concern, that the heirs of these innocent victims not be subjected to additional forms of persecution. And we believe that Germany, of all nations, has a special obligation to heed the lessons of history that the Council is mandated to memorialize.” You cannot say it more clearly than that!
As The New York Times pointed out when the Germans first began sending the Roma (the more correct name for Gypsies) back to Romania, these people do not blend in as well as other populations. They have customs which other groups are either unaware of or do not understand. As one German official put it, “they don’t like to be inside, so when we assign them to a hostel, they set up camp in the yards or fields nearby.”
They have certain toilet rituals as do Muslims—somewhat different rites, but rituals just the same. In a conversation I had with Dr. Ian Hancock, the United Nations Representative of the World Romani Union, he told me that Gypsy customs regarding cleanliness include the use of three towels for drying the body, how men’s and women’s clothes must not be washed together, how bedclothes are marked so they cannot be reversed (sheets from head of the bed put on the bottom) to avoid ritual pollution, and much more.
The rest of the world does not know much about Gypsies, so some feel it is therefore appropriate to hate them. I hosted the first commemoration ever held for Gypsy victims of the Holocaust, in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington in 1986. I wish everyone could have attended that moving ceremony and witnessed the evident pained memories among the Gypsies there. We like to share in each others’ joys but we must acknowledge participation in a community of pain.
This community of pain must extend to the gay community as well. I do not speak from any medical perspective. Except for attempting to be compassionate, I do not represent a particular theological view. Rather, here too, I raise questions.
Why are so many persons homophobic? Historically it has rarely been enough to condemn homosexuality. In the late 12th century England it was decreed that men who cohabited with men were to be buried alive. In an article I wrote in 1991 in Fellowship magazine I noted how homosexual activity became a crime according to secular as well as religious law:
“This was promulgated throughout all of Christian Europe until the French Revolution, and on both of the continents of the Americas while they were under European domination. Again, the punishments were zealously cruel. In Switzerland, during the 18th century, guilty parties were subject to having their limbs amputated over a period of several days before their corpses were buried. Throughout history, many have likened homosexuality with blasphemy, idolatry, witchcraft, cohabitation with animals, even association with Jews.”
What are the fears? It is a rather curious fact of history that almost nowhere, at any time, was the treatment of lesbians comparable to the treatment of homosexuals. The same seems to be true of the situation in Germany today—men are despised, women tolerated. What’s going on?
The situation of the Turks and Kurds in Germany is quite complicated. Many if not most of the Kurds in Germany are Turkish people fleeing from persecution in their native land. Germans who are intolerant of foreigners despise the Kurds. Germans who are intolerant of foreigners despise the Turks. Generally, Turks and Kurds despise each other. Kurds have separated into factions, so many of them despise each other. Some observers feel that the Bonn government is doing much too little—and what they are doing is much too late—to ease the tensions between its citizens and Turks, Kurds, Albanians, exiles from the former Yugoslavia, Russian immigrants and many others.
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