68 árum seinna

Það er víðar en á Íslandi sem að umræða um innflytjendur er fyrirferðarmikil.   Það er sjálfsagt að fagna þeirri umræðu, og fari hún fram á skynsamlegum og friðsömum nótum er hún án efa til mikilla bóta og verður vonandi til framfara.

En gyðingar í Munchen fögnuðu bæði og syrgðu í gær.  Þeir fögnuðu nýju samkomuhúsi sínu, en syrgðu þá sem létu lífið og þeirra sem voru grátt leiknir fyrir 68 árum, þegar "Kristalnóttin" svokallaða var, þegar nazistar slepptu lausum liðsmönnum sínum á gyðinga.  Það sem á eftir fylgdi er líklega flestum kunnugt.

Það var ágætis frétt á vef Times um atburðinn, þar segir meðal annars:

"A huge new synagogue, Europe’s largest Jewish centre, was opened in the heart of Munich yesterday to mark the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht — the Night of Broken Glass — when Nazis went on an anti-Semitic rampage across Germany.

The cube-shaped building is an act of defiance at a time when anti-Semitic sentiment is again beginning to bubble below the surface.

Neo-Nazis plotted unsuccessfully to blow up the foundation stone of the new synagogue, and bureaucrats dragged their feet for decades before agreeing to give the prime site to the Jewish community. "

""This building shows that we Jews are again part of German society,” said Charlotte Knobloch, the leader of Germany’s Jewish community. She choked back tears as she recalled how, as a frightened six-year-old, she had clutched her father’s hand and run past burning Jewish shops in Munich on November 9, 1938. “Now I have just handed the key to this new synagogue to a child who is the same age as I was on that night. The circle has been closed.”

A survey published by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a social justice charity, demonstrates how controversial the new centre will be among Germans: 39 per cent of those questioned say that the country is being dangerously swamped by foreigners, 18 per cent that the influence of Jews is too great while 15 per cent want a strong leader, literally a Führer.

Fréttina í heild má finna hér.