Prague declaration
The Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism (Engl. Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism ) was by several prominent European on 3 June 2008 politicians , former political prisoners and historians signed, among them Vaclav Havel and Joachim Gauck . Among other things, the declaration called for the condemnation of communist crimes and the proclamation of August 23 as European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and National Socialism . The day of remembrance was proclaimed by the European Parliament on April 2, 2009 .
history
The declaration concluded the international conference “Europe's Conscience and Communism”, which was held at the seat of the Czech Senate in Prague . The conference was organized by the Senate Committee on Education, Science, Culture, Human Rights and Petitions, under the patronage of Alexandr Vondra , Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic for European Affairs. "As long as Europe does not accept the idea that National Socialism and Communism are completely equal criminal regimes, it will not be uniform," Senator Martin Mejstřík announced. The conference received letters of support from President Nicolas Sarkozy , Lady Margaret Thatcher , Jason Kenney and Zbigniew Brzeziński .
debate
The historian Efraim Zuroff , director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem , criticized the Prague Declaration for “relativizing the Holocaust and its unique significance for world history” and called it “the manifesto of the movement that shared communist crimes with those of the Nazis equates ". The comparison deliberately ignores the fact that the mass extermination under National Socialism was aimed at the origin of the victims, whereas in Stalinism people were murdered on the "basis of economic and political factors". Shimon Samuels, director of the European Bureau of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, saw the danger that the perception of the Holocaust would be removed from European history and called for the intention of this campaign to be recognized and condemned.
Political scientist Clemens Heni also sees the Prague Declaration trivializing the Holocaust, it “denies the unprecedented character of the crimes of the Germans , which are mentioned but not recognized in their specifics. In addition, National Socialism is split off from the Germans, which is not tenable, since National Socialism was made by none other than the Germans (and Austrians). "
Barry Rubin , on the other hand, stated that the declaration in no way played down the crimes of National Socialism and that it was in the interests of Jews and Israel to support the declaration. The “small group” campaign against the declaration was based on “defamatory false assumptions”.
The political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu sees in the declaration "the fulfillment of the second stage of postcommunist development in the region [...] both documents condemn the atrocities of the last century and resolve to proceed on a path of democracy and tolerance." "
Richard Herzinger argues that the statement "has been denounced for years by left-wing" anti-fascists "of various stripes with the claim that the Holocaust and the crimes of communism are" equated "there. Some particularly zealous, overcompensating German “anti-Semites” even slander this declaration as “anti-Semitic” [...] In truth, the Prague Declaration speaks quite rightly of “substantial similarities between Nazism and Communism” “.
One of Lithuania's leading intellectuals and Yiddish language documentarists, Dovid Katz , has called for the Prague Declaration to be replaced with a new project that specifically addresses the legacy of Soviet totalitarianism without equating anti-human crimes. He points out - with extensive evidence also from contemporary witnesses - that history is being rewritten in "genocide museums" in the Baltic states and that work is being carried out on equating the Holodomor in Ukraine with the Shoah. This is done in order to deny the crimes of nationalist fighters against Bolshevism, to make the Baltic victim role "historical" absolute, to trivialize the victims of the Russian population in World War II and, on the contrary, to justify claims for compensation against Russia. For example, the "International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the National Socialist and Soviet Occupation Regimes" excludes the historical subject of investigation of the bestial mass murders that were committed a few weeks before (!) The arrival of German troops. The answer to the Prague Declaration was that initiated by Katz and u. a. by Martin Schulz signed 70 years Wannsee Conference Declaration.
First signatory
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Similar explanations
- Council of Europe Resolution 1481 (2006) on the need for international condemnation of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes
- Declaration on the Crimes of Communism
literature
- Clemens Heni , Thomas Weidauer (ed.): A super GAUck. Political culture in the new Germany. Edition Critic, Berlin 2012. ISBN 3-9814548-2-0 ( table of contents )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Resolution of the European Parliament of April 2, 2009 on Europe's conscience and totalitarianism
- ↑ Prague conference wants to call for the condemnation of communism at European level ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Český rozhlas, May 29, 2008
- ↑ Zuroff: Gauck's candidacy "extremely unsettling" ( memento of the original from March 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Publicative on June 21, 2010
- ^ Gauck's distorted view of history - Der Rückfall , taz.de, March 16, 2012; Accessed August 23, 2013
- ↑ Wiesenthal Center To OSCE Human Rights Conference 'Prague Declaration' is "A Project to Delete the Holocaust from European History", October 5, 2009
- ^ Clemens Heni: The "Prager Declaration" , in: Tribüne. Journal for Understanding Judaism , Volume 49, Issue 194, 2nd Quarter 2010; partially accessible online ( memento of the original dated February 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed February 24, 2012
- ↑ Barry Rubin: 'Those who neglect their past have no future' . The Jerusalem Post , August 13, 2010
- ↑ Vladimir Tismăneanu, Vladimir: Citizenship Restored . Journal of Democracy 21 (1): 128-135, 2010
- ↑ Richard Herzinger , Beate Klarsfeld and the “anti-fascist” anti-Gauck strategy of the Left Party , Richard Herzinger's Free World, Die Welt , February 29, 2012
- ↑ 70 Years of the Wannsee Conference Declaration , [1] from January 20, 2012
- ↑ There is a video in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz6nfdylwBw
