Buying German Products?

The only product I won’t buy is Bayer aspirin, Bayer made the gas. At this point I see no reason not to buy German products. It’s been OK to take German reparations money all these past 50 years, in the untold billions? The Germans can never ever make any type of atonement for the terrible horrors inflicted on our nation. No amount of reparations can pay us for what they did. But if we can take their money, we can buy their products. Do you buy Swiss watches? The Swiss are much more anti-semitic than Germans. The Swiss were smart enough to stay out of it.

Do you often hold children responsible for the crimes of parents and grandparents?

It’s one thing when you know that the people involved are still Neo-Nazis and the like, but it’s altogether different when it’s a blanket ban on people who weren’t even born when the atrocities happened (which covers just about every person working for a German company today).

In your parents’ day, many of the people working (and therefore benefiting) from the company may well have been involved with the Holocaust. That does not hold true today.

The Wolf

Mod, no question that Hitler was amalek of the 1st degree. And if you read Daniel Goldhagen’s book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, you’ll see that the German nation knew exactly what was happening. But the Swiss knew too and they are more amalek than anybody, although “humanely” so. At least half of Europe under the Nazis were willing collobarators and executioners too. And the fact is that halocho b’yedua she’eisov soneh es yakov, all goyim hate us. I definitely understand anyone with your policy but you can’t mandate that on the rest of us.

I accept your apology for deleting my post 😉

I assume this came up due to one of the stories YWN posted today, the one about the Jewish German doctor who refused to operate on a patient who is seemingly a neo-Nazi.

I won’t repeat my comment I wrote there, but I think CantorEsq has a very good point and it seems silly to “punish” for atrocities that were committed 70 years ago but not for atrocities that were committed before then.

My grandparents are German Holocaust survivors, so in my family, we do not buy any German products ever. We got a set of Wusthoff knives for our wedding and returned them for a non-German brand. The thing is, though, at this point, it’s more out of sensitivity to my grandparents than trying to punish the Germans. Those who were Nazis are almost all gone by now, and I find it unfair to punish the grandchildren who did nothing wrong and mostly feel horrified about what their grandparents did. There is still a Jewish community in Germany- you think they refrain from buying German products? I know a few current German Jews, and they’ve all said hands-down that Germany remains the best country in Europe for Jews right now. They don’t want to even approach that road that so many of their neighbors are turning to these days, so while anti-semitism has been steadily rising across Europe, Germany has mostly stayed away from that bandwagon.

Prof

….and Mercedes made the ovens.

We had no relatives in the holocaust. My mother’s side is from Israel, and my father’s family was already in America for 2 generations nonetheless, my father wont touch a product made in Germany. He once bought a nail clipper and a few weeks later saw that on the bottom of it said MADE IN GERMANY, he tossed it right out.

Moderator-80

I agree that…

“its not a matter of revenge

its a matter of abhorrence and disgust that cant be put into words

its a matter of remembrance

its a matter of respect for our alter bubbies and zadies”

BUT…

It’s ALSO a matter that SOME of those alte nazis, yemach shemam, ARE still involved in running big german companies. Not many, but some.

Also, as we saw from the article in today’s YWN even (at least some)younger germans are still wannabee nazis. The one in the article today is 36 years old and has a swastika tattoo!

So we see that it is not all “ancient history”.

It IS true that almost EVERY European country did or still does persecute us, but as one comment above mentioned, the germans went “above and beyond” ALL our historic tormentors in their cruelty, brutality, inhuman savagery and the vast scope of their barbarity.

Aside from 6,000,000 Jewish lives lost that we all know about, the serious intense trickle down psychological damage to survivors and their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren continues today, and will continue for at least a few more generations.

I don’t tell anyone else what to do, but I for one will not contribute even one penny to their economy.

i would have tossed the clippers out as well. i wouldnt want to use them or have them in my house. its much more than causing financial harm.

as far as the car. if i had to drive it i would, but i would make extreme efforts to sell it (to a non-Jew) as soon as i could.

what motivates you myfriend to argue on this way that people feel? no one is insisting you feel this way. no one is arguing this is the logically ethical way to feel in some philosophical sense. this is the way we feel

does it offend your sense of justice? fairness? you conclude that is not correct?

can you explain your attempt to find a logical flaw in the way that sacrileges father responded.

80, I wouldn’t buy German either. Especially a large ticket item like a car. I agree with her father’s reaction fully. I was just curious how she thinks he would’ve reacted after the fact on a large ticket item. (Although, my grandfather, who survived the holocaust, once gave me a hobby book that was made in Germany.)

i misunderstood, sorry