Kurt Goldstein found himself in a French internment camp in 1939 after fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
In 1942, he was denounced by the French, turned over to the Germans and sent to the Auschwitz death camp.
Maria Koenig was deported to Auschwitz from Lodz, Poland, where she grew up.
Her husband, Adam, was arrested in Frankfurt and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.
After World War II, the three did what to many was the unthinkable: They decided to stay in the country that tried to exterminate them.
Believing that a more humanistic Germany could grow out of the ashes at Auschwitz, they settled in the former East Germany.
Today, 50 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz camp, all three individuals see some progress in Germany’s ability to deal with its past.
But not enough.
They are not only worried about the rise of radical-right politicians and parties, but about neo-Nazi sympathies in the German justice system.
Still, these survivors – not only of the Nazi death camps, but also of the failed attempt at a Communist state in East Germany – criticize, but stop short of condemning their fellow citizens.
The three spoke to a group of foreign reporters here a few days before this week’s commemorations of the liberation of Auschwitz.
“I don’t believe in making generalities,” said Maria Koenig, a soft-spoken woman. “German children today have just the same chance as children from other countries to grow up in a democracy.”
Adam Koening focused his criticism on the German justice system, which he felt does not sufficiently pursue neo-Nazis.
He cited a case that generated a worldwide uproar last year, when a judge serving on a state court in the southwestem German city of Mannheim voiced sympathy for Gunter Deckert, the chairman of the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party.
Goldstein, vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee, said the spontaneous chain of candles that popped up major German cities several years ago to protest arson attacks by neo-Nazi skinheads on homes belonging to Turkish immigrants was a positive sign.
But overall, he said, “there have not been enough lessons learned from Auschwitz.”
Citing two specific cases, he questioned why a former guard at the Ravensbruck women’s concentration camp was given a reparations payment by the German government while a former concentration camp inmate from Eastern Europe could not receive asylum here.
Goldstein said he believed that the ongoing public discussion as to whether Germans have mastered their past is ill-focused.
“A past cannot be mastered,” Goldstein said. “It has to be confronted.”
And 50 years after the war, he said, the Germans have yet to confront their past.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
