NORMAN MANEA
397
which for two thousand years constantly emphasized the image of the cru–
cifixion as an example and proof of the inextinguishable Jewish guilt-an
untruth that, as one knows , nevertheless has had a mystifying power that
was all but impossible to resist. A dangerous cultivation of the hatred of
Jews, which paved the way for the atmosphere of crime and its denial. A
millennium-old monumentalizing of shame?
r
understand all too well that one can grow weary of the influence of
the mass media, even if this cannot be compared with the threat of death
under which Jews lived in constant fear for two thousand years.
Christ, with his Jewish parents, would have been marked for death at
Auschwitz. Shouldn't the Christian world dare to see him in everyone of
the six million Jewish victims? We may recall the Nazi song:
"Wir wollen
keine Christen sein, denn Christus war ein judenschwein.
!!
How could the world of believers forget this apocalyptic violation of
the most important of the Ten Commandments? Are fifty years too long
a time to remember this "shame," which in the end is far more than mere–
ly shameful? Is the "moral cudgel" of the Holocaust nothing more than an
excessive invention of the media's postmodern trivial machinery? And is
the truth really so difficult to distinguish from its commodification?
r
wonder whether we are allowed to lose sight of this distinction, even
when the banalization, ritualization, and trivialization of truth proves too
much for many of us. And even when appropriate solutions are just as dif–
ficul t as the debate itself. The aftermath of the truth is, after all, nothing
compared to the horrible truth itself-a fact which,
r
hope, is news to no
one.
r
hope that Martin Walser and his readers agree with me that we can–
not give up our memories of the past-nor their burden, nor their
meaning-no matter how unbearable the vulgar simplifications, how
regrettable the inevitable distortions to which they are subject.
Translated
by
Susan Bernofsky
