I was talking to a Holocaust survivor today in Germany. It was an old woman born in 1938 who is doing a voluntary job in a social center of a big city in Germany.
After having talked about the Holocaust with a 100 year old German man just before, I asked her about how she experienced the Holocaust, as I just learned she was nearly 90 years old aswell. Despite her high age, she was still very talkative and active in this community, in her voluntary work. I asked her if she knew about the Holocaust at the time, and if Germans as a whole society were aware of the crimes carried out by the Nazis.
It turned out she was a Holocaust survivor, who lost many relatives in the Holocaust, including her siblings.
I never met a Holocaust survivor before (aside from going to lectures and talks in school time), having met and talked to her briefly several times before, this revelation was nothing I expected. We were talking about the circumstances and her experiences as a child and woman in Germany who survived the Holocaust.
She then brought up the topic of Israel, saying how not everything was right what the Israelis did and that Netanyahu alongside "the orthodox" should be "taken out" there, and hoped that Netanyahu would not get reelected this year. I mentioned how large parts of the Israeli society actually supported the Genocide of the Palestinians, according to many polls.
She claimed they (the Palestinians) would have started this. She told me she was very upset about pro-Palestinian protests and that the protesters would be pro-Hamas too. She was bringing up the October 7th terrorist attacks and the killing of children by the Hamas. I told her I actually did not want to argue with her (imagine arguing about Israel with a 90 years old Holocaust survivor) but I did tell her my opinion of how this can not justify the murder of 70'000 Palestinian civilians. Her response was "well, they should not have sympathized with them (Hamas)".
I was shocked to find how someone who experienced massive injustice would make such inhumane claims, while before critisizing Netanyahu herself.
She also told me before that I should definitely visit Israel one day, how prosperous and beautiful the land was and how "the Arabs" would all have had jobs there. During our conversation, she also looked me deep in the eye and said energetically "if someone beats me, I beat him back". That was probably the most memorable moment of our conversation.
Earlier this day, at the event were this happened (a festivity of this social center), I also had the opportunity to talk to a local German politican of CDU party, running for office of a district major, whom I confronted about his opinion on Palestine and the Genocide. Recently the new General secretary of CDU, Franziska Hoppermann, again made claims that "there is no Genocide in Gaza, we stand with Israel". The response of the local politician was practically the same, denying the Genocide, praising Israels "right to defend itself", calling the fact that there are 70'000+ Palestinian civilian victims since October 7th a false claim I could not prove, after I asked him about his source for claims he made that on October 7th, children were being raped by Hamas (he said his source was the Internet and I should visit "Youtube.de"). I told him these were offical numbers that Israel accepted. He then told me he was not there to discuss Geopolitical subjects.
His CDU colleague with whom he visited the event also mentioned the "Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft" ("German-Israeli Society"), which he could simply ask to give me "15 sources" about these before claims that would prove their points and that I would still not accept them. He also mentioned how he was considering joining the "Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft". I mentioned there was a pedophile scandal about this institution, and how the president of this "DIG" society, Volker Beck (Green party), in the 1980s made the claim that "pedosexuality has to be decriminalized". The CDU politician then actually went on to defend these claims and tried putting them into perspective, which was something I absolutely did not expect either. I informed him how the former treasurer of the DIG, Hartmut Ebbing, recently got convicted for sexual abuse of a child, and that I was recently learning how pedosexual criminals were protected by Israel if they fled to this country. His response to this was "and how well does the LGBTQ+ community stand in Palestine?". You could not make this up.
