Students used firecrackers, stink bombs and tear gas to protest lectures by Jewish professors. University administrators expelled not the troublemakers but the professors.
Using government propaganda against Scientology, a local priest incited the community against a teacher because of her religion, Scientology. Despite an excellent record, the school authorities dismissed her from teaching and she will never hold another class.
he Nazi policy of excluding the Jewish people from German life in the 1930s had severe consequences. More than 10,000 public health and social workers were driven out of their jobs because they were Jewish; 4,000 lawyers were divested of their licenses to practice; 2,000 doctors were expelled from hospitals and clinics; 800 university professors and lecturers and 800 elementary and secondary school teachers were deprived of employment.
Today, expulsions of Scientologists follow the same pattern and are happening with growing frequency. It is now common for business, professional and social organizations to establish policy not to admit Scientologists as members, based on nothing whatsoever other than politically-sanctioned bigotry.
German Federal Labor Minister Norbert Bluem, a senior official of the ruling political party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is at the forefront of the drive to exclude Scientologists from employment. He has vowed to prevent Scientologists from obtaining jobs in schools, the government, or businesses. Mr. Bluem decreed that Scientologists cannot operate employment agencies. True to style, Bluem ignores his country’s own courts. His order has twice been subjected to judicial scrutiny. Twice it has been declared illegal. Mr. Bluem, however, has not rescinded the decree.
For a country currently facing a job crisis—Germany’s unemployment rate is the highest since World War II—one would think it could ill afford to be denying jobs to capable, industrious people. One would also think the Labor Minister would be offering leadership, but instead he uses his office as a platform for prejudice.
When, in 1994, we ran a series of advertisements in this newspaper to draw attention to the discrimination, Minister Bluem agreed to meet with us to discuss our concerns—if we stopped the ads. As a sign of good faith, we did so. But Mr. Bluem never did meet. He flatly refused. Instead, he stepped up his propaganda efforts and attacks on Scientologists in Germany. His prejudice has driven him so far as to band together with a small group of extremists and demonstrate personally in front of two of our churches in Germany—most recently, in December 1996, at the Church of Scientology in Hamburg.
Yet, when we recount these alarming incidents to German government officials, many of them simply deny that a problem exists. After all, they think, persecution on a major scale could not happen again because Hitler isn’t around any more and nobody has written a book calling for the extermination of minorities.
The world, however, thinks otherwise, and has promised never to forget the lessons the Holocaust taught. Too many German officials are practicing the slogan, “Never Remember.” If they were not so blind, they would see the historical parallels and cringe at the reprise of history’s crimes.
Like Mr. Bluem, other German officials have refused every request to engage in dialogue to resolve the discrimination occurring in their country.
“Never again” must not be an idle slogan, it must be a promise we keep. True, no one has been killed or hauled off to death camps. But history has taught us that we would be at fault if we stood by and did not point out the alarming similarities between the 1930s and today. German officials protesting these comparisons should stop recreating the past and they will remind no one of it.
Germany Then and Now