Ethnic Cleansing in Germany: A Symposium
Forced to Leave Because of Religious Belief
Gerhard Waterkamp
Founder of Alliance for Liberty and
Rights of Minorities (ALARM)
In 1995, I was working in a major German corporation. I was responsible for about 5,000 employees worldwide; we were running plants from China to South Africa and the United States. The company learned from the “Sect In-Charge” that my wife and I had participated in religious services at the Church of Scientology in Clearwater, Florida. When they received this information, I was fired on the spot. Then they made it known to all the companies I had worked with previously that I was a Scientologist.
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Germans have not learned the lesson from history. They have not learned that there is a value in keeping up human rights. That there is a value in safeguarding freedom.
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I went to a placement agency in Germany, because you could not get the kind of job I had by sending in your résumé—you have to go through a placement agency. I said, “Look, that’s the situation. I have very good references. I am a Scientologist and I will not say I am not, because this is what I am, and I was fired because of this fact.” And a good friend of mine who has a placement agency in Hamburg told me, “Gerhard, it’s really bad. But as long as you have this Star of David on your jacket—being a Scientologist—you will not find a job in Germany.”
I looked for a job for six months—without success. I had no chance. I was fortunate enough to get a green card from the United States, so my family and I moved here in Autumn 1996.
Just to end the story, my mother was here last April, and we discussed the whole situation, and she didn’t believe that this could happen again. She said, “Oh I’m so happy that you and my grandchildren are here in the United States, because Gerhard, what I see in Germany is a similar situation to when I was a child. The unemployment rate in Germany is right now about 12%, there is a lot of desperation in this country, there is a lot of hatred against foreigners, against minorities, and it feels so much the same as when I was a child. I’m just afraid we will have the same or similar catastrophe we had before. And I’m just glad that you’re in the United States and my grandchildren can grow in a free country.”
And this is why I also feel it is very, very important to ask: Why does this happen in Germany again? The reason, for me, is that Germans have not learned the lesson from history. They have not learned that there is a value in safeguarding human rights. That there is a value in safeguarding freedom. I know my people in my homeland—they are about money, they are about power. Germany has never been a country promoting freedom, nor a country promoting tolerance.
With the reunification and with the economic problems in Germany, the situation has become very bad. I have founded a group here in the United States to inform the public and officials about what is going on in Germany because I feel significant action must be taken. It will not be solved by expecting that Germans will stand up. They did not stand up when Hitler took over. And it is now time to stand up.
It is time. How far should we let it go? How much further should it go—what is going on in Germany? So it is very important that American politicians and American citizens voice their concerns about the situation in Germany and help Germany live up to its democratic aspirations and not return to its earlier dark history.
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