Introduction

Abstract

The terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001 revealed a new form of human rights violation. Germany’s reaction to these events was significant in not drawing comparisons with the crimes of the National Socialist past. Such comparisons appeared inappropriate as the terrorist attacks had revealed a different sort of enemy with a different target. Germany’s response to the ‘war on terror’ is one example of how recollection of Nazi atrocities is inevitably losing its force in political decision-making in Germany as the country faces European and global responsibilities in the present and as distance increases from the National Socialist past. However, this does not mean that popular interest in this past is fading in Germany, or indeed in other countries. On the contrary, media attention together with ritual commemoration, educational initiatives and political debate keep the period very much alive.

No one can say what human rights violations will be like in the 21st century, but it is likely that they will bear no resemblance to Auschwitz and that we will not notice them if we remain transfixed by Auschwitz alone (Jan Ross, 1998).