Date:         Thu, 11 May 1995 10:22:29 -0500
Reply-To:     H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers <drogers@jaguar1.usouthal.edu>
Sender:       H-NET List on German History <H-GERMAN@MSU.EDU>
From:         H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers <drogers@jaguar1.usouthal.edu>
Subject:      Re: Victimization

There are two messages below:

1)


Submitted by:   Allan Mayberry Greenberg <amayberg@curry.edu>

With regard to issues of guilt and responsibility, I wold just like to
remind you of a small book that you probably read long ago, "The Question
of German Guilt" (Die Schuldfrage) by Karl Jaspers.  For me, this has
always been the point of departure in considering the complexities of
guilt and responsibility.


2)


Submitted by:   Sidney Bolkosky <sbolkosk@umd.umich.edu>

Douglas Skopp's message on Dresden was very moving. I, too, tend to agree
with grief for the grievers.  But what seems to be happening in Germany
these days is rather more disturbing.  The killing at Dresden is not
equivalent or even comparable in any way to the killing at Auschwitz; nor
are young men killed fighting for Germany to be equated to young men
killed at Babi Yar or in death camps.  Air raids are not gas chambers,
families were lost, perhaps, but do they compare to Jewish families
annihilated?  The millions of Germans deported from the East, from
Silesia and the Sudetenland cannot possibly be equivalent to the
deportations of Jews during the war.  The quality of grief perhaps cannot
be strained, but it certainly can be distorted.

Sid Bolkosky
UM-Dearborn
.