I NEWS I 1 444 JEWELRY APPRAISALS At Very Reasonable Prices ' Call For An Appointment 30400 Telegraph Road Suite 134 Birmingham, MI 48010 (313) 642 - 5575 i, Oa teite9g 1-1/1 1 established 1919 ‘, GEM/DIAMOND SPECIALIST AWARDED CERTIFICATE BY GIA IN GRADING AND EVALUATION • Daily 10:00-5:30 Daily Thurs. 10:00-7:00 Sat. 10:00 4:00 Some Germans Search For A Usable Past - DEBORAH LIPSTADT 18 MONTHS: Special to the Jewish. News A 71 0% ANNUAL PERCENTAGE RATE 7.71% EFFECTIVE ANNUAL YIELD 36 MONTHS: ANNUAL PERCENTAGE RATE 0 8.50% EFFECTIVE ANNUAL YIELD GUARANTY FEDERAL PRESENTS A FIRST-RATE RATE. If you're looking for a good investment, let service you've been missing at larger banks. us show you a few points of interest— Because at Guaranty Federal, all our percentage points, that is. Guaranty customers rate special treatment. Federal's 18-month and Rate available for limited time Federal i 36-month CD's have the A+ GuarantgcF only. Effective annual yield nk rates that make good sense Savings based on quarterly compound- (and more importantly, dollars) AMIN ing. Substantial penalty for for your investment portfolio. early withdrawal. 1 374-3300 Plus you'll get the attentive /11111111111611111 ■ We outnice the other banks. MBER FSLIC Taylor Lincoln Park Administrative Office 23333 Eureka Road Taylor, MI 48180 2041 Fort Street Lincoln Park, MI 48146 Your S7V1,S Insured lo S100.000 18 FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 1988 Dearborn Riverview Allen Park Farmington Hills 17800 Fort Street 14601 Southfield Road 31550 Northwestern Hwy. Riverview, MI 48192 Allen Park, MI 48101 Farmington Hills, MI 48018 Wyandotte 2211 Fort Street 136 N. Telegraph Road Dearborn, MI 48128 Wyandotte. MI 48192 Trenton Southgate 2410 West Road Trenton, MI 48183 13350 Fort Street Southgate, MI 48195 debate is raging in Germany that could have profound im- plications for the way that country — and much of the rest of the Western world — view the Holocaust. The debaters include some of the most prominent modern historians in Germany. Though the debate is osten- sibly concerned with history, it is of contemporary impor- tance because many of those involved are convinced that a nation's memory determines its community and politics; or, to paraphrase George Orwell, whoever controls the past will win the future. This battle, born in the wake of Bitburg, has been described as a search by con- temporary Germans for a usable past. The individual at the center of the debate is Ernst Nolte, one of Germany's most out- standing historians. Asso- ciated with him are some of Germany's prominent intel- lectuals. Their arguments can be briefly summarized as follows: 1. Except for their use of gas, the Nazis copied the USSR which in the 1930s had killed peasants and estab- lished camps in which multitudes died. 2. Genocide was practiced by both the Germans, who killed people based on their "race," and the communists, who killed people based on their economic class. 3. "Provocative" statements by Jewish leaders such as Chaim Weizmann, who in 1939 proclaimed Jewish loyal- ty to Britain, convinced the Nazis that the Jews were their enemy. Therefore, though the outcome was hor- rendous, the Nazis' annihila- tion of the Jews was an attack on a potential enemy. Joachim Fest, one of Nolte's compatriots and the author of a massive biography of Hitler and the editor of one of Ger- many's most prominent newspapers, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, took the argument to its next "logical" step. In an attempt to demon- strate that other nations have continued the practice of genocide his article echoing Nolte was accompanied by a photograph of a pile of Cam- bodian skulls, remnants of the victims of the Khmer Rouge. The message was clear. The Nazis were part of a continuum which they had neither begun nor completed. Their actions were wrong but hardly unique. It hardly seems necessary but one is fearful of not answering these arguments. Irrespective of the numbers killed by the Soviets or any other country, none of these constituted attempts to an- nihilate all the members of a particular group. The effort to totally "exterminate" the Jews make it different from anything done by the USSR. If Nolte believes that the Holocaust was the German response to Weizmann's pro- fession of loyalty to Britain in 1939 how does he explain the six years of anti-Semitism which preceded it, and Hitler's anti-Semitic ravings in "Mein Kampf?" I recently was in Germany as a guest of the German Foreign Offi c e. Though my of- ficial purpose was to see how Jewish history in general and the Holocaust in particular is taught and to meet with representatives of the Jewish community, the "historians' struggle," as this debate is known in Germany, became an important sub-text of the visit. It was quickly apparent that it had already trans- cended the province of the historians. It was mentioned by historians, politicians, religious leaders, government workers, students and, in one unique interchange, a taxi driver. This debate has struck such a responsive chord in Ger- many because it is a means for Germans to try to nor- malize their past. It allows them to argue that what their parents had done was some- thing that was and is prac- ticed by many other nations. By arguing that Germans were no different they can call a halt to the seemingly never- ending discussion of the ques- tion of guilt. They can shake off the burden of the sins of their fathers and regain a respected place in the annals of history. While some people use it as a means of restructuring the past, others are profoundly worried about its long-range implications. Some Germans openly and directly confront their history. While they legitimately reject the con- cept of "collective guilt" they recognize the need for coming to terms with the past. The eloquence of the president of West Germany. Richard von Weizacker, in the days im-