Today’s Germans don’t deserve blame for Nazis – Putin
Germany should not bear the blame for its Nazi past forever, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Historical memory is important to avoid repeating the same mistakes, but blaming a nation’s past sins on younger generations is “unfair,” he has said.
In an interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday, Putin commented on the invitation of the German delegation to Holocaust commemoration events and the ceremony marking the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland. It would be incorrect to compare modern Germany to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, the Russian president said. “Modern German society has nothing to do with it.”
“We must remember this, we must not forget this, but to shift the blame onto today’s generation of Germans for what happened in the 1930s and 1940s, it seems unfair to me,” he said, adding that he lived in Germany and still has many friends there, so he is well aware that Germans still feel guilt for the past.
Newer “generations should not face deprivation of civil rights for what happened under Hitler,” he stated.
Earlier, a similar sentiment was shared by US-based billionaire Elon Musk. Germans should be “proud” of who they are, he told a group of Alternative for Germany (AfD) party supporters last weekend. “Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents,” the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said.
