Thread by @pavel23

Thread #1 of 2:
Ok, I did want to let this one slide, but I think I owe some people an apology, try to set the record straight and give you a bit more context about this thread, especially this tweet that has caused so much outrage.

https://twitter.com/pavel23/status/1502302774347935752

First of all, I do regret that tweet for two reasons: It is not historically accurate and a hyperbole, and it distracts from the point I was trying to make, and I should have known better than to be so sloppy on such a serious topic.

The tweet is out there, and I generally do not delete my tweets but prefer to live with my mistakes. However, the tweet has been reported and checked by Twitter a number of times, and they came to the conclusion that it does not violate laws or content guidelines.

That does not mean it is a great tweet, but the reactions helped me to learn a few things and think about my own past and why I might be emotionally compromised. I believe that the more emotions you have about something, the less rational you can be about it.

My personal history and the history of my family are deeply intertwined both with Germany, Nazism, wars, Russia and Russian totalitarianism, and the whole thing is not abstract history, but very personal to me.

My family has been torn apart and displaced by Nazis and by Russians multiple times, and I have heard many detailed accounts from family members and older friends about what has happened.

My family has roots in a number of ethnicities, Czechs, Germans, Serbs and Spanish people were among my ancestors, and in terms of religion they came from Christian Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish families, and my family tree is a total mess because many ancestors..

...were married several times, and my grandparents spoke about 5-10 languages fluently, so with my three languages, Czech, German and English I feel a bit under-educated, but I am rooted in different cultures and identify more with Europe than any particular nationality.

I was born in Prague in 1965 and was brought as an refugee to Germany in 1968, where already parts the of my family lived who escaped from Czechia during post-war ethnic cleansing of Czechs who were deemed to be ethnic Germans, although none were born in Germany.

One grandfather fought in the Czech resistance and was killed on May 8th 1945, the last day of the war, by Waffen-SS troups who disobeyed the ceasefire. Another grandfather, who was born in Karlovy Vary or Karlsbad, was considered ethnic German and drafted into the Wehrmacht.

The day after the one grandfather was killed, the other was captured by Russians and spent two years in a Russian prison camp. Another family member from Berlin had been sent to an Nazi military boarding school in Czechia and deserted at the age of twelve, ...

...making his way to Berlin by train, hidden by Wehrmacht soldiers in overhead compartments who had pity on him. Only few of his schoolmates survived the war, having been sent to the front lines in the last weeks of the war.

One of my grand-grandfathers was Josef Mayer, a famous hair dresser and inventor of a type of curling machine, and founded a company named "Realistic" that produced curling machines. I saw the Name "Mayer" still present on the factory walls in the 1980s,..

... because the communists who seized all his properties did not even bother to paint the buildings in forty years, and I saw his old family home that had been turned into a Kindergarten. I do not feel any hate against Russians for all of this, ...

...and have been even apologetic for Putin, understanding that Russia had historic reasons to be wary of the West and paranoid about security, and that Democracy is a foreign concept in Russia, and violence, corruption, lies and autocratic rule has been the norm for 500 years.

However, I assumed that Putin was a more modern and sophisticated person, and despite all the information about all the crimes he has been accused of I gave him the benefit of the doubt, until the Invasion of the Ukraine made me change my mind.

Now a few clear words about the holocaust: It is the best documented crime in history, and I have held original documents in my hand, signed and stamped by meticulous German civil servants, with receipts for every minor piece of property taken, the payments made for transports...

...to concentration camps, and I have been to a number of camps myself, and I talked to survivors, and some of my family members confirmed that everyone knew or could have known what was going on there, so I have no doubts whatsoever that Nazis slaughtered millions of people,...

...most of them Jews, based on bullshit theories about race and racial chauvinism, and did it on a unprecedented industrial scale. They killed using hunger, cold, disease, beating, bullets, poisons, gas and gruesome medical experiments, ...

...and because it all was so horrible, some people just don't want to believe it and will cling to any straw to avoid believing the painful truth about what their ancestors or ideological role models have done. This is human, but also stupid and dangerous.

Moral issues aside I consider the Nazis as losers. They lost the war, lost major parts of German territory, caused Germany to be split and lose it's sovereignty for 45 years and put a stain on German reputation forever, ...

...so even from a German nationalistic perspective they must be considered as the most harmful force and worst enemy the German nation ever encountered, and everyone thinking that any good might come from reviving that ideology or following their footsteps is a moron.

However, I think in order to fight toxic and dangerous Nazi ideology, it is important to understand what really happened and who those people in charge really were, and why they had such an appeal to Germans, and not just Germans.

The problem with Hitler as the epitome of evil is manifold. First of all, it limits the scale of evil between zero and Hitler and suggests there can be nothing worse or more evil.

Turning Hitler into a myth also hides the truth that he was not an exceptional person in terms of abilities, capabilities and ideas. Nothing he came up with was original or new, although the Nazis embraced progress and innovation in many areas.

Continuation:

https://twitter.com/pavel23/status/1503042714962649101