Liberation

This last weekend was Liberation day in Holland May 5th to be exact, it also happened to be the day that I left for Berlin. What struck me though was how much attention the 1700 or so Canadian veterans impacted the Dutch. For those who did not know there was about 1 million Canadian solders fighting in the second world war, many of whom helped to liberate the Dutch from German occupation. So this last week in The Netherlands was full of pomp and ceremony which I must admit made me feel proud and just a little chocked up to read and hear about all the vets that were here to commemorate the war.
After I arrived in Berlin where Andreas picked me up, we decided that maybe we should go and look at the new Holocaust memorial near the Brandenburg gate. It was not officially open but it is quite a impressive visual monument and I will be sure to go back the next time I am in Berlin.

What ticked me off just a little more than perhaps is should was the fact that directly across the street was the future home of the American Embassy. I am not sure why the German government agreed to let them build there, but they have. Do they not look around the world and see what having an embassy in the centre of the city and such a high profile spot will do? One only has to look at Den Haag to see what they might be in for.. Triple barricades, armed guards, CCTV everywhere not to mention the traffic distribution and general feeling of paranoia.

I really wonder sometimes if the Americans have asked them selves why maybe they feel so threatened and apparently need to much protection if they are the home of the free and brave? The thing that actually bothers me though about this future home is that to me it is a hypocritical statement to build right there, the Americans like so many other countries during the second world war would not let Jews into their country who were trying to flee from the Nazi rule; unless of course they were filthily rich or were connected somehow.
Hell they did not even join the war until near the very end when one of their supply ships was sank after trying to bring a convoy across to the British. And yet, they seem to tell the world that THEY saved the day and THEY ran Hilters army into the ground. What about the British, French, Canadians, Soviets, Polish and all the others who were there from the beginning and lost their soldiers and people by the hundreds of thousands???!!!
It mostly makes me sad that such a perfect place in Berlin needs to be soiled by the presence of the one country in the world that feels they have the right to do as they please with the rest of us.
So the rest of my weekend was spent visiting with friends, window shopping and just enjoying myself. What I did not realize was that on Sunday May 8th is a Liberation day of sorts for the German people as well. This is the day that the Nazi party surrendered. The night before I was renting movies with Jens and we got Der Untergang which was not planned, but very interesting because the events in the movie were taking place exactly 60 years before not much further away from where we were. Apparently there was a lot of controversy around the movie because people did not like the idea that Hitler was shown to have emotions, in fact that he was portrayed as a human being with feelings. I think this is a grave mistake to make, if people only want to remember him as a monster or someone who was not real, we might then forget that he was human and that in a very short time back in the 1930's a nobody came to power and created a monster of a political party, war, army and other atrocities. I hope we never forget how quickly and easily the holocaust, war and Nazi Germany happened.
In this day and age we also have turned a blind eye to Milosovich, the Taliban, genocide in Rwanda, and several other countries' Leaders who have committed equally violent and horrific crimes against humanity, and yet it seems unless there is barrel of oil involved or a plane hitting a skyscraper we just go about our business with ignorant bliss.

Below is a list of movies that I think are well worth watching about the second world war which do not show an American perspective but what it might have been like for those who had to live with it since the beginning. All of these movies are worth watching for the ability to perhaps help people see there are not straight lines between good and evil or Black and White in the world.
The Pianist, De Tweeling (The Twins), Max, Das Boot (The Boat) , Soldaat van Oranje (The Solder of Orange)

One final remark was that on the 8th just before I had to catch my flight, there was a neo-nazi demonstration from Alexanderplatz down the Unter-den Linden to the Riechtag/ Brandenburg gate. According to the news, there were around 2000 Nazi marching down the street and about 10,000 anti-nazi demonstrators marching right behind them.. it must have been quite a sight, I am only sad that I missed it.