Swastika ban pragmatic, not censorship
Ilana Fried’s column “Keep historical honesty for
future’s sake” (Feb. 3) appears to suggest that
Germany’s long-standing ban on the swastika is part of an
attempt to erase its ugly past.
Quite the contrary, Germany’s high school history
textbooks present a thorough and honest account of the 1930s and
’40s. The swastika is not banned from appearing in
reproductions of archival photographs, documentary footage or
fictional films set during the Nazi period. But Germans are banned
today from publicly wearing swastika armbands and displaying Nazi
flags.
While as Americans we may feel that such a ban denies basic
free-speech liberties, I think we can all understand why in 1945,
when Germany was struggling to rebuild after the devastating Hitler
years, such a ban was a pragmatic necessity.
So one might be tempted to think that by now the ban has
outlived its usefulness. But the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
reunification of Germany changed everything.
In the preceding decades, the communist government of East
Germany had not been honest with its people about their Nazi
legacy.
And so in the 1990s, when the German economy was not doing well
and guest workers from poorer countries were perceived as stealing
jobs and undercutting the wages of native-born Germans, Nazism
became appealing to many disaffected unemployed youths, especially
those in the eastern part of the country.
While there are very few Jews living in Germany today, there are
many immigrants from places like Russia and Turkey who live in
daily fear of violence from neo-Nazis. To these foreigners, a
swastika is similar to what a burning cross is to blacks in the
United States.
Whether you agree with the swastika ban or not, its intent is
not to deny historical truths, but rather to make people of all
backgrounds feel welcome in a country that wants to show it has
changed for the better since 1945.
Chris Norlin UCLA alumnus