Bad Harzburg is a picturesque spa town at the northern foot of the Harz Mountains. The yield of former salt mining is natural salt water, on which a spa was built at the end of the 19th century, according to the fashion of the time. - historian Irén Rab begins writing his opinion in Magyar Hírlap.
Bathhouses, elegant hotels, gambling casinos, everything that a spa guest who wants to relax and unwind can wish for. Bad Harzburg became a world spa, this title meant openness to the world. Compared to the anti-Semitic baths, wealthy Jewish guests were welcome here, at least until the early 1930s.
The name Bad Harzburg is also familiar from history. Here, in 1931, German right-wing parties, including the German National People's Party (DNVP), the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) branded with Hitler's name, the Steel Helmets and other "patriotic", right-wing organizations, signed an electoral agreement to eliminate the support provided by the Weimar Republic. democratic conditions. The grouping, known as the Harzburg Front, was supported by the prominent figures of industrial and banking capital.
In Bad Harzburg, this right-wing, i.e. wealth and nationalist identity is still visible today. The gentlemen who seek refreshment in the salt baths come from the older, affluent (West) German middle class. In the afternoon, after the daily treatment, they walk on the promenade, greet each other and smile politely.
I visited this area a lot, because the Harz hiking trails start from here. It happened once, even before the great wave of migration in 2015, that the sound of a Russian tango accordion hit my ears while driving through the city. On the promenade, on a bench, sat a Soviet veteran, his jacket barely visible from under the real or fake decorations. He played the accordion and sang Soviet-Russian military notes from World War II. The gentlemen in the audience stood around him smiling politely. They listened with fake interest, and at the end of the production, they threw all the change into the usanka placed on the ground.
The soldiers of the victorious army played music for the vanquished here. I tried to imagine this surreal scene on the Danube River, as a former Soviet soldier plays the accordion to entertain the strolling Hungarians, but it was simply unimaginable. The situation is different with the Germans. They keep silent because they want to forget the wartime past. Therefore, they were brought up with the greatest value being tolerance, humanity and solidarity. The goal of education was to never, ever commit the sins committed by the ancestors again. So that communities, peoples, and ethnic groups are never stigmatized or excluded. They even wanted to forget the terms themselves, discrimination and collective guilt, sweep them out of the collective consciousness. That's why the migrants were accepted without collars, and that's why the Russian soldier could sing to his heart's content with the self-confidence of a winner.
Since the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out, this story comes to mind more and more often. Values have been reevaluated, repressed anger has surfaced from the subconscious, and the Germans are discriminating again. The aggressor Russia's past and present, prominent culture, Russian symbols or events have all been banned. The mitigating circumstance for the behavior of the Germans is that not only they, but the European Union, America, and thus the entire democratic Western world limit the rights of the Russian people, and treat them in this way because they belong to a particular community, the Russian people.
Institutions and individuals feel obliged to express their solidarity with yellow and blue flags as Je suis Ukraine. The banned Nazi symbols used by the Azov Corps are props for pro-Ukraine demonstrations, so they can be purchased in German stores as Ukrainian symbols. At the same time, the aggressive Russians are being sanctioned and an entire people is being discriminated against. Russian athletes were excluded from international sports events, ruining their previous work and sports careers.
Western theaters have fired Russian artists, removed the works of Russian composers and playwrights from their repertoire, Russian authors have been excluded from university courses, the most prestigious international music competition, the Tchaikovsky, will cease, just because the Russian government supports it. Russian cats are also in the crosshairs, they will not be able to participate in the cat beauty contest in the future, because this is what the International Cat Federation has decided. Russians are collectively guilty, all Russians are responsible for Putin's actions.
I still remember when Gazprom's ad was circulating in Bayern Munich's stadium (perhaps even during the memorable 2021 Hungarian-German EC match), because the Russian Gazprom was one of the main sponsors of the most national German club. Today there is no trace of this, the name of the company has been removed from the list of sponsors. The other Russian-backed team, Schalke, also broke the contract, a few days after the outbreak of the war, they simply stuck the Gazprom inscription on the jersey, because they suddenly couldn't find any other jerseys in the store.
Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea, was called a coward by the press for handing the club over to a foundation rather than condemning his country, Russia. The Ukrainian ambassador in Budapest also wanted to remove the Russian football coach of Fradi, but it is difficult for us to live with such old-fashioned pressure. Fradi also had a Ukrainian head coach, Rebrov, who was also loved by the fans when the team won.
The various discriminatory sanctions could be listed for a long time. For example, I liked the true story of a German friend the best. The employee of a Turkish shopkeeper who had settled in a long time ago was a kind, helpful Latvian woman. He spoke a little bad German, his accent was Russian, but the guests loved him. In the second week of the war, customers were left behind because they did not want a "Russian woman" to serve them.
Beyond the moral weight of the matter, that's about how much they can tell the difference between a Latvian and a Russian in the West. I would like to ask, then on what basis are Ukrainians distinguished from Russians? I once graduated in Russian, but when I was in Ukraine, I never knew whether I was speaking with a Ukrainian or a Russian. The Ukrainian president himself was born into a Russian family and started learning Ukrainian only in 2017 - in order to play a leading role. According to legend, he also took the presidential oath in Russian in 2019. Now he is the biggest Ukrainian who is taking his people to the slaughterhouse against the Russian aggressor. If a Romanian suddenly became Hungarian in Transylvania, he would have no political credibility there.
The West, which places a lot of importance on legality, is not bothered by the fact that by blocking the news coming from Russia, the freedom of communication is violated, that the curious European citizen can only get one-sided pro-Ukraine information. More recently, the EU has been supporting Western media working in Ukraine with millions of euros. The West, which places a lot of importance on legality, is also not bothered by the fact that bank accounts are being closed in the name of democracy, including Russia's investments in the West. The United States and the European Union have so far frozen $30 billion in assets of Russian oligarchs close to President Putin, including luxury yachts, helicopters, real estate and art treasures.
This is a dangerous thing. Once upon a time, the Germans did this with the property of the Jews, supported by the Nazi ideology, and thus they discriminated against people they did not like. Class enemies were treated similarly in the Soviet Union, they used the Bolshevik ideology. We know where this all led. This is why the convention on the protection of human rights was created after the war. The convention prohibits all kinds of discrimination in terms of gender, race, color, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, belonging to a national minority, property, birth or other status.
Let's refresh our memory a little to see what is happening in the world in connection with the war in Ukraine! Let's try to remember how much trouble wars have brought to humanity, that punitive sanctions and stigmatization with collective guilt are worthless. We just wallow ever deeper and ever more hopelessly. The only alternative to war is peace, and it cannot be forced through arms shipments, but at the negotiating table.
Photo: Weekendplanner/Bad Harzburg
