VOLUME 8 NO.3 MARCH 2008 The 1960s: The refugees and student radicalism he attitudes of the refugees from with the Royal Air Force and for his chari­ Central Europe towards the table work thereafter. The instigators of the student radicalism of the 1960s demonstration, Rosenstock wrote, 'not only was influenced by events in West showed disrespect to the memory of tens of TGermany, where the student movement was thousands of heroes but were also oblivious far stronger and more purposeful than in of the fact that, but for the courage of those Britain. After the Bundestag elections of anti-Nazis, freedom of thought and speech 1965, the Federal Republic had been would have vanished from the European governed by a Grand Coalition of the two continent'. big parties, the CDU and the SPD, leaving Expressions of support for student radi­ Httle effective opposition in parliament. calism were unpopular with refugees, The radical left established the Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the student as C.C. Aronsfeld discovered when he wrote protesters during the May 1968 riots in AuBerparlamentarische Opposition (APO, France an ill-judged article in AJR Information of 'Extra-parliamentary Opposition') to fill this June 1968 on what he saw as the parlous state gap. though in reality the APO's aim was to historian Eva Reichmann regularly spoke at of West German politics. Beginning with the take on and, if possible, overthrow the West meetings held under its auspices, readers of stark pronouncement 'Something is rotten in German state. After the shooting of a student, the joumal would have been shocked to find the State of Bonn', he described the opposi­ Benno Ohnesorg, by police at a demonstra­ it lumped together with resurgent neo- tion offered by democratic forces to the tion against the visiting Shah of Iran in 1967, Nazism, as well as aggrieved by the neo-Nazi NPD as feeble even by comparison organised revolutionary groups emerged, suggestion that they had been taken in by with resistance to Hitler under the Weimar principally the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF), an exercise in German hypocrisy. Republic. better known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Worse was to follow. Wemer Rosenstock Greatly exaggerating the crisis facing For many refugees, the propensity of reported for AJR Information on the West German democracy and the threat these German student radicals for extremism ceremony held on 15 September 1968 to mark posed by the NPD, Aronsfeld argued that, and violence, their doctrinaire fanaticism and the unveiling of the memorial at Dachau should a revolutionary situation arise, or their impatience with Westem parliamentary Concentration Camp, at which he had should the ruling Grand Coalition break democracy were uncomfortably similar to the represented the AJR and the Council of Jews down, the extra-parliamentary opposition of wave of intolerant radicalism that had swept from Gemiany, alongside delegates from 15 the young should 'supplant, or at the very Germany in the early 1930s. In April 1968, countries. A small number of left-wing least supplement' parliamentary democracy. AJR Information reported that Oskar Seidlin, protesters, mainly students, carrying banners In effect, Aronsfeld was arguing that West a German Jew who had emigrated in 1933 with anti-Vietnam war or anti-NATO slogans, Germany in 19f)8 faced a situation like that and now held a chair at Ohio State had disrapted the proceedings and tried to confronting the Weimar Republic in the early University, had refused the offer of a shout down Klaus Schutz, the Mayor of West 1930s, where, with the democratic system professorship at Munich University: the Berlin and President of the Bundesrat, the weakened beyond repair, the only choice had dismption of university life, the shouting upper house of the West (German parliament, been between the Communists on the exfreme down of lecturers, and the denial of reasoned when he delivered a message on behalf of left and the Nazis on the extreme right; in debate were too reminiscent of 1932/33. the Federal Govemment. The insult to the the present case, a coalition around the APO Refugees were particularly shocked when memory of the many thousands who had would be the best altemative to replace the student radicals disrapted events connected died at Dachau was clear. parliamentary system of Bonn. to the Holocaust. In May 1968, the Joumal Rosenstock's dislike for what he saw as The response to this dubious historical reported that a joint meeting of Christians modish anti-establishment gestures came comparison - especially its negative attitude and Jews taking place in West Berlin's Opera across clearly when he compared the to parliamentary democracy in West Ger­ House as part of Brotherhood Week, an protestors' juvenile antics with the experi­ many - was predictably hostile. A letter to annual event held across West Germany to ences of delegates like Odette Hallowes, who the editor from R. Graupner took issue with promote reconciliation and tolerance, had had been captured working with the Aronsfeld, defending the Grand Coalition as been the object of a left-wing demonstration Resistance in France and had survived a stabilising factor in West German politics against neo-Nazism, the rise of the far-right torture by the Gestapo and incarceration in that had been absent in Weimar. Graupner NPD and the 'hypocrisy' of Brotherhood Ravensbriick concentration camp, and Group dismissed as mere wordplay Aronsfeld's ar­ Week itself. As the AJR supported Captain Leonard Cheshire, distinguished gument that the students' movement was Brotherhood Week, and as refugees like the both for winning the Victoria Cross as a pilot Continued on page 2 AJRJOURNAL MARCH 2008 THK UMiOs: KEFlKiEES ANI) STUDENT RADICALISM nmliiiiicd fn,ni Ini-; I took home the raw materials - four hours of film - to make a short version for our extra-parliamentary but not anti-parliamen­ When a unit of the West German GSG9 supporters and trustees. My grandchildren helped - the 17-year-old with editing; the tary, citing their frequently stated hostility (Grenzschutzgrappe 9) killed or captured the younger ones, aged 9 and 11, saw previews. to parliamentary democracy and their hijackers and freed the hostages, three They fell in love with the 'stars' on screen. eagemess for a revolution to overthrow it. leading figures of the RAF committed suicide One of my grandchildren took a copy to her class teacher at her village primary school. He concluded by questioning whether in Stammheim prison, where they were being Her teacher watched the film and asked if one Aronsfeld's indulgence towards revolution­ held. This gesture, which was followed by of the 'stars' could visit the school. She ary youth with its openly anti-democratic the murder of the West German employers' amended the curriculum for the year; the chil­ leader Hanns-Martin Schleyer, who had been dren read about the Kindertransport In class, aims belonged in the joumal at all. This was thought about local refugees, and discussed doubtless the view of the great majority of kidnapped by the RAF, symbolised the prejudice and stereotyping. A total of 27 9-year- readers, for no more was heard of sympathy interlinking of German left-wing radicalism olds interviewed their chosen star! One girl at with Palestinian exfremism. the school wrote: 'If something like this happens for the neo-Marxist left. Within a few years, again, I would like someone from a dangerous the student protest movement had run its Though the radicals of the 1960s did a country to come to be part of my family' course, and political radicalism itself became great deal to confront West Gennan society Our grateful thanks to Walter Weg, Hannah Lewis, Freddie Knoller, Ron Leaton and Alison yesterday's fashion. with the crimes committed under National Wood and all the schools. We'll be doing this Though the New Left in West Germany Socialism and to shake it out of its again In March and later in the year, so please actively sought to expose the crimes commit­ complacent forgetfulness about the past, they contact us If you are willing to be questioned also tended to instramentalise the Holocaust and filmed by our young journalists. ted under Hitler, thus siding demonstratively Judith Kramer with the victims of Nazi persecution, it was for their own purposes, as a weapon to use [email protected] often surprisingly heedless of the sensitivi­ against their elders, whom, in a phrase often tel 0845 0945 980 Charity 1119291 ties of Holocaust survivors. This was in part attributed to Gudran Ensslin of the RAF, due to the framework of theory by means of they termed 'the generation of Auschwitz'. which it attempted to understand National Most of the radical left-wingers showed little Berlin exhibition to Socialism. It used various theories of Fascism interest in the refugees from Hitler and other marli 70tli anniversary to explain Nazism, which it saw as just one Jews, especially when these did not fit into of KristaUnacht their ideological preconceptions. Widespread of a group of extreme right-wing totalitarian In November 2008, on the 70th anniversary movements operating in the interests of empathy with the experience of German Jews of Kristallnacht, an exhibition in Berlin is to capitalism and the mling classes and against under Nazism had to wait until the following document the pogrom on the Jews of decade, when the television series Hobcaust Germany - their synagogues, institutions, those of the working class. homes. The blanket category of 'Fascism' in­ was screened in Germany. The exhibition is being organised by the cluded the movements led by Mussolini in The Jews from Germany and Austria, Murdered Jews of Europe Foundation, the Topography of Terror Foundation, and the Italy and Franco in Spain, where racialism having experienced the Nazi dictatorship, New Synagogue Berlin - Centrum Judaicum and antisemitism played no part (unless im­ were mostly unsympathetic towards the Foundation.