This week there were two related events linked by almost 75 years. The last survivor of the Nazi's Treblinka extermination camp in Poland died at the age of 93. Samuel Willenberg, a bricklayer, had managed to escape in a mass camp breakout. He and 66 others were the lucky ones. Some 870,000 men, women and children, mostly Jews were gassed and burnt in Treblinka. Meanwhile in the east German town of Bautzen, an old hotel was being prepared to receive 300 asylum seekers. This week it was set on fire and the roof and top story badly damaged. A crowd gathered to watch the blaze with evident approval. Indeed so great was their delight, that they tried to stop firemen getting through to douse the flames. The German government has denounced the incident as shameful and a thorough investigation is underway to find the arsonists. It must be hoped that even though they are working in what appears to be a partly hostile community, totaling just 40,000, the police will unmask the perpetrators who will then be subject to the full force of the law. The clear danger with mob action of this kind is that the guilty are never discovered. Protected by a wall of silence, they get away with their crime. When that happens, other bigots and racists will be encouraged to commit more crimes against migrants, rising from beatings to murder. We already saw last week a howling mob terrifying a busload of migrants, including women and young children, as they arrived at a new hostel. This behavior needs to be set in a German context. This is a nation where "Alles in Ordnung" - "Everything in order" are watchwords. There is a general disapproval of unruly conduct. Thus there was genuine horror at the mass sexual assaults - the "Taharrush" - that took place on New Year's Eve at the Cologne railway station. All Germans were outraged by the anarchy that took place that night. It was simply not the German way. But then came the reaction to the knowledge, originally concealed by the city's police, that the criminals were young migrants. Racists were quick to exploit what had happened. To the despair of the majority of Germans who had backed the humane and generous action of their chancellor Angela Merkel in welcoming over a million helpless refugees, neo-Nazis seized on the loathsome crimes of these young people to stoke the fires of Islamophobia and incite race hatred. This is important because the people who gave the world Bach, Beethoven and some of the most enlightened philosophers and writers, are also part of the nation that gave the world Treblinka, Auschwitz and the mass extermination of Jews, gypsies, the physically and mentally disabled and anyone else considered opponents of the Nazi state. And that state-organized slaughter was also "Alles in Ordnung". Post-war trials of the architects and guards of the Nazi death camps were underpinned by the meticulous records kept on these crimes against humanity. The lesson of history is that even a well-ordered state like Germany has a tipping point. The Nazis came to power because the civil powers and moderate opinion were unable to resist the rise of savage race hate. Germany is not poised on the brink of a Nazi return. But it is facing an upsurge of brutal bigotry which it must crush immediately.
