​​A tribute to all those who ever said NEVER AGAIN and a wish for more Imagine-nation.

Yesterday someone said to me that life is all about stories, and that we have a choice whether we choose fear or love. I agree. We always have the choice whether we want to continue and repeat the same story or find a different ending. It's up to you and me. 
I will tell you a little story and you can decide what you want to do with it. 

....Imagine there's no countries 
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too .....
John Lennon, Imagine

October 2022- recently in front of the local supermarket

The other day I stepped out of my local supermarket and saw a group of young guys, maybe 17-20 years old, who, despite their tender age emanated a rotten smell and disturbing images from the past. They were dressed in 90's skinhead gear and one of them was wearing a t-shirt displaying a picture of Hitler together with a Thank you Message.

My neck swelled up with rage (rage is always a good way to cover fear) and I was speechless. What do you say in the face of so much ignorance and cynicism? I didn't follow my first impulse, namely screaming at them, closely followed by tattooing a swastika on their foreheads and sending them to Israel. No, acting out of hate doesn't make things better.
​
I sat with my anger, fear and sadness. My time of brooding is over and I thought I'd lay an egg for thought.

Do you remember where you were on 9 November 1989?

I think I sat in a movie watching Dangerous Liaisons. I'm not a hundred percent sure because I was really stoned that night. The next morning the Berlin wall was open. 
On 9 November 1938 I wasn't even a twinkle in my father's eye but here I am, trying to connect the past to the now and to the future. 
I translated with DeepL and quote: "9 November 1938 is an incisive date in twentieth-century German history. The "Reichspogromnacht" represents a preliminary climax of the persecution of Jews in National Socialist Germany - a persecution that had its first systematic Reich-wide publicity with the boycott campaign in 1933, which gave itself a "legal form" in the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 and which ultimately found its destination in the extermination camps."(bpb_german) 

Please note that none of those events happened just like that. They were results of slow, persistent processes.

Growing up in West-Berlin

I grew up in West-Berlin during the "Cold War". Living in a locked-in city, I never felt trapped, it was what I knew. I do remember being scared of a nuclear war and of the fallout after Tschernobyl. I went to visit the other side which was so different from ours. And nobody, in a million years, would have thought that the wall would come down as quickly as it did. But down it came and the German people, like Humpdy Dumpdy, sat on the wall and celebrated the union. In time, Germany started nursing its hangover and finally is facing the ugly demons that had been swept under the rug of denial, blame, and resentment. ​​

Who would have thought...

In my haydays, the 1980s and 90s, nobody would have thought that extreme right-wing thought and action would ever build a nest in the mainstream of society again. (I'm not thinking of a nest with cute chicks. I'm thinking of smouldering cells preparing to ignite.)
Yes, there were some who were "proud to be German", but they were frowned upon. It just was condoned, despised, unacceptable.

​We had learned everything about national socialism and the Holocaust and knew, from the bottom of our hearts: NEVER AGAIN. We had learned the facts. But, and this is based in my own experience, I had not learned to deal with the feelings of shame and guilt that came with the facts. And, this is my hypothesis, 1) not many people had 2) and now we have the salad, a direct translation of a phrase that expresses the fact that we're a in a pickle.

Shame

For many years I did not only feel a lot of shame but also guilt for the atrocities Germans had committed between 1933 and 1945. I cringed every time I had to tell someone I was from Germany. Living in Paris, I would say, "Je suis Berlinoise", after all, since Kennedy it was ok to be a Berliner. In London I always added "half Finnish", which was often greeted with a "You are half finished? HAHAHA!) Full of German shame I hid behind my Finnish-ness which, as it turns out, has its limits in terms of WW2. 

Be as it may, the operative word is hide. I hid. This is what shame does. It makes us hide in dark corners and makes us sweep things under the rug. It is in the darkness, where that, what we are ashamed of can, without us realising, grow and eat its way into our thoughts and lives until it is back. 
And suddenly ordinary people, people like you and me, demonstrate and walk next to right wing extremists, dare I say neo nazis. On Mondays they go for walks against refugees, against masks during Covid or the raise of gas prices.They know no shame. ​And suddenly the boundaries blur between what is right and right. 

Back to my shame. So I was hiding behind my Finnish passport. I felt guilty for things I hadn't done and shame for things others had done. And I was only half German, what about those who were 100%? I don't know. We never talked about it. Probably because we were not aware of it. I only became aware of my shame once I lived abroad. 

Don't mention the war

Outside my hometown I didn't know many Germans. Living abroad, I didn't socialise with Germans and for years, I hardly spoke German until I took a course to teach it as a foreign language. For some people I might have been the only German (only half!!) they had ever seen and was met with comments about the war. (Don't mention the war!) One day I found myself in London's Goethe Institut and with a BANG I realised that THIS was German culture. Writers, Thinkers, Philosophers of different political and religious orientation, greeting me from different decades and centuries. They had in common their passion for thought and prose, and through it they had beautified and maybe even bettered the world.​ Absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

Nothing to be proud of either. Their work was theirs, I could admire it, be inspired by it, but I couldn't take merit for it. In the same vein ​I understood that the terrible actions of generations before me are not mine to feel ashamed of. Shame and fear gives them power and make them live on. 

 I can observe where others went wrong and choose a different path. ​

I mustn't feel ashamed or frightened. Shame and fear close the brain and won't allow me to learn. I don't have to make all mistakes myself, I can learn from the mistakes others made. I can observe where others went wrong and choose a different path. ​

As long as there are borders and countries, nationality is probably always going to be a part of personal identity. But, ACHTUNG!- STRONG OPINION, it cannot and must not be the only basis for a person's identity. 

Love or Fear

To those who are proud to be of a particular nationality, those who say that they are the real, true, and only deal, those who say that the Holocaust is a lie, those who want to lull others with fear and stereotypical black and white thinking I say: Fear not. You are loved. You are safe. You can be sure, that it will happen NEVER AGAIN. ​

Identity

Life itself is nothing but a learning process. Forming an identity takes time and reflection.

When I googled the lyrics for Imagine, I came across this question: Is Imagine the greatest song ever? I've seen questions like this before. My answer to whoever asked this question: What do YOU think? Yes, knowing what music I like and which song is my greatest song ever, is also part of identity.

Reflection is an honest process of looking at what's there, what's missing and what needs to go. Throughout my life I have opportunities to reflect on my beliefs and my actions. I can look at what I learned from my family and my social surroundings and whether those ideas and convictions still serve me on the path I am choosing. I don't have to live a life based in shame, guilt and fear. 

 Shame, guilt and fear - all in good measure.

Too much or too little of shame, fear and guilt as part of the identity can cause great damage, not only on a personal level, but also on a national level. After all, the national level of identity is based on those personal identities that make up the nation or, to say it with Karl Mannheim, people in a society and community are part of a common horizon of experience. Every person’s life is an individual process nestled within collective evolutionary developments, historic events, geographical features, and socio-cultural education which in turn are shaped by the individuals of their time.

We are the individuals of our time. We shape the world we live in. Let's give following generations reasons to think well of us. 
​Thank you for reading, have a good day.
Yours, Pia