Liberia

[michi]

I just watched this documentary about Liberia:

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia

This is the dark side of West Africa, describing conditions in post-war Liberia. I think this is an outstanding documentary, well worth watching, but be warned: there are some quite harrowing scenes in this film.

Michi.

[rachelnguyen]

Michi, I made it through about 5 minutes before I had to turn it off....

Maybe I'll give it another go at some point. It is important.

R

[michi]

Michi, I made it through about 5 minutes before I had to turn it off...

Yes, sorry, that's why I added the warning. But I think that knowing about circumstances in countries such as Liberia is important. Part of the problem is that most people have no idea how bad things really are in these places.

Michi.

[rachelnguyen]

And what our (The US) role is/was/will be.

[Djembe-nerd]

Wow !! ......no words.

[e2c]

And what our (The US) role is/was/will be.

yes.

[rachelnguyen]

And really, if I can screw up the courage to watch more of it, I will try to, because here in RI we have a HUGE Liberian population. (One of the biggest outside of Liberia, I think.) Which means this is where my friends have come from. This is what they have gone through and this is the legacy that they carry with them as they try and make new lives for themselves here in RI.

Events like the war in Liberia, or Vietnam or (insert post colonial horror show here) does show how very resilient people are, though. When Nguyen and I went to Vietnam a couple of years ago, you would never guess that the place was ravaged just 33 years before. I pray that that will be the case for Liberia too.

[michi]

And really, if I can screw up the courage to watch more of it, I will try to, because here in RI we have a HUGE Liberian population.

Most of the most shocking bits are early in the documentary. It gets a little easier to watch further on.

Which means this is where my friends have come from. This is what they have gone through and this is the legacy that they carry with them as they try and make new lives for themselves here in RI.

Yes. I think it is good to have some understanding of what these people have gone through, and how much it really means for them to get a chance to make a new start elsewhere. I suspect that the strict border protection policies that so many countries (including Australia) try to enforce would look a little different if the general population had any idea of what day-to-day life is like in the refugees' country of origin...

Events like the war in Liberia, or Vietnam or (insert post colonial horror show here) does show how very resilient people are, though. When Nguyen and I went to Vietnam a couple of years ago, you would never guess that the place was ravaged just 33 years before. I pray that that will be the case for Liberia too.

I grew up in post-war Germany and, thirty years after the end of World War 2, there was essentially no visible hint as to the horrors of the past. But the scars remain in the population and take longer than that to vanish...

Cheers,

Michi.

[e2c]

Rachel (and all) there's a fairly large Liberian population in the D.C. area, too (and Ethiopian, Eritrean, Sudanese, Somalian, Algerian, Iranian etc. etc. - pretty much every country you could name in both Africa and the Middle East that's been war-torn at some point over the last 40+ years).

That said, I don't know that I can watch this film.

But I do I think it is very important that films like this one about Liberia be made, and that they be publicized, and watched, and discussed.

But sometimes, there is just too much horror to take in, you know?

michi, just curious - what part of Germany? When I was in the Hannover area in the late 70s, there were still lots of places that were fenced off because of unexploded mines, etc. And the buildings were all new - because the areas I was in had been leveled during the War.

There was also a frightening (to me) silence about the War, and especially about the Holocaust and related atrocities. Young people (university age and younger) were not taught anything about it in school (as is still largely the case) and they were completely ignorant about it.

No offense - I liked the Germans that I met, but I found it to be a somewhat oppressive place, on the whole. It was as if it was all under a cloud... where everyone was trying to forget, and where most people were afraid to remember. (Or so it seemed to me at the time, but I wasn't there long enough to be able to develop a truly balanced understanding of the area where I was staying, let alone the people.)

[michi]

michi, just curious - what part of Germany?

I grew up in Munich.

When I was in the Hannover area in the late 70s, there were still lots of places that were fenced off because of unexploded mines, etc. And the buildings were all new - because the areas I was in had been leveled during the War.

Really? I don't recall problems with unexploded ordnance in Bavaria during the time I grew up. The northern part of Germany got hit worse during the war, so quite a few cities in the north have post-war buildings (Hamburg in particular.) Munich got hit pretty badly too, but a large part of the original city core survived, or survived enough to repair. Are you positive that these areas in Hannover were really fenced off because of mines? The late seventies is more than thirty years after the war ended; I know that, very occasionally, during building excavations, workers would come across an unexploded bomb, that was very, very rare--maybe once a year or so. Certainly, I don't recall fenced-off areas anywhere in Germany in the entire 22 years I lived there.

There was also a frightening (to me) silence about the War, and especially about the Holocaust and related atrocities. Young people (university age and younger) were not taught anything about it in school (as is still largely the case) and they were completely ignorant about it.

By the late seventies, Germany had well and truly begun to deal with the war atrocities. A number of German movies were made in the late seventies that dealt specifically with this issue. Among them were "Aus einem deutschen Leben" (English title "From a German Life") about Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz commandant, "Reinhard Hedrich--Manager des Terrors", and "Holocaust – Die Geschichte der Familie Weiß" (American made, first broadcast on German television in 1979).

There certainly was a strong desire by then among the younger generation to find out what really happened during the war, and many of the nazis who survived the war were either dead or too old by then to still have much influence. It is true though that the holocaust was not taught in high school history classes back then (at least not while I was in high school in the seventies). I also remember occasionally encountering anti-semitism, but this was rare, at least in the social groups I hung out with.

The role of German industry in war, particularly with respect to slave labor, was not exposed much until later though, probably the mid-eighties.

No offense - I liked the Germans that I met, but I found it to be a somewhat oppressive place, on the whole. It was as if it was all under a cloud... where everyone was trying to forget, and where most people were afraid to remember. (Or so it seemed to me at the time, but I wasn't there long enough to be able to develop a truly balanced understanding of the area where I was staying, let alone the people.)

Personally, I wouldn't say that Germany was oppressive by the late seventies. Quite a liberal society by then, although nowhere near as multi-cultural as it is today.

Cheers,

Michi.

[e2c]

Fenced off due to unexploded bombs, etc.: I can only go by what my hosts told me. They might have been wrong, but I do know that there were warning signs all over the place + barbed-wire-topped fences, etc. around the areas in question.

As for the sense of oppression that I felt (in the place where I was staying, and out in public places that were German tourist destinations - i.e., foreign tourists didn't go to them), it seemed quite real. But that might have more than a little to do with the fact that I was trying to recover from a bad case of bronchitis at the time.

What was very interesting to me: People generally looked like they could have either been from my home town or else related to me, or both. (I'm of German descent and come from an area that was heavily populated by Germans during the 18th and 19th centuries.)

Re. movies, thank you for the titles. During the summer that I was in Europe (and when I visited Germany), there was a so-called "documentary" making the rounds that was wildly popular with many young people. I can't recall the title, but it was - basically - footage of Hitler speaking at various rallies, sort of edited together without any explanation or background. A lot of kids were (apparently) sporting Nazi regalia openly - without really understanding what any of it meant. There was a lot of concern about the film and about the effect it was having on young people. (I wish I could be more specific; as I don't speak or read German, it's kind of hard for me to be able to dig up details.)

[michi]

Fenced off due to unexploded bombs, etc.: I can only go by what my hosts told me. They might have been wrong, but I do know that there were warning signs all over the place + barbed-wire-topped fences, etc. around the areas in question.

Hmmm... Strikes me as unusual. I certainly don't have any memories of any such areas, and it seems very unlikely nearly 35 years later, especially when you consider the German obsession with tidiness and orderliness. I do recall one fenced-off area in Munich that was still there in the early eighties, around the former Armeemuseum (Army Museum). That building was bombed in WW2 and left as a ruin until the late eighties, when it was torn down and replaced by a government building. There was fencing around the building, but not because of unexploded ordnance, but because the building was a ruin and dangerous to enter.

Post-war ruin of the Army Museum in Munich

Museum-18.jpg (165.27 KiB) Viewed 92 times

Re. movies, thank you for the titles. During the summer that I was in Europe (and when I visited Germany), there was a so-called "documentary" making the rounds that was wildly popular with many young people. I can't recall the title, but it was - basically - footage of Hitler speaking at various rallies, sort of edited together without any explanation or background. A lot of kids were (apparently) sporting Nazi regalia openly - without really understanding what any of it meant.

Neo-nazism and right-wing extremism have been an ongoing problem in Germany. When you have uneducated and poor young people who cannot find employment, they make for fertile ground for extremist ideas. However, this movement is a very small minority in Germany and not reflective of Germany as a whole. In fact, the display of Nazi emblems is a criminal offence in Germany that carries a prison sentence.

Overall, I believe Germany has done a credible job in dealing with this past and there have been many more movies and documentaries made about this dark chapter since the seventies. (If you have not seen "Downfall" yet, do—it's an outstanding movie.)

Cheers,

Michi.

[e2c]

As I said, I truly don't know the story behind the areas that were fenced off, but I believe it's possible - if only because there was a *very* bad problem in a residential area of Washington D.C. when I lived there, due to the fact an old toxic waste (mustard gas!) dump was located underneath parts of the neighborhood.

Sometimes things have a way of coming back to bite us.

Re. neo-Nazisim, well yes - I grew up with people who had lost family members in the Holocaust, so I'm extremely wary of (and try to be aware of) things like this. (We have a significant minority of neo-Nazis in the US - ever heard of the Stormfront website?; not sure if the American Nazi Party still exists, but it wasn't a paper tiger.)

IKWYM about the German need to keep things orderly, if only because i grew up in a local culture that's inherited that tendency.

[e2c]

unexploded bombs in Germany: http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 91,00.html

[michi]

Thanks for that link!

I have no doubt that there is unexploded ordnance still kicking around, but I'm still a bit skeptical.

Barely a week goes by without a city street or motorway being cordoned off or even evacuated in Germany due to an unexploded bomb being discovered.

That certainly does not align with my personal experience. In the twenty-odd years I lived there, bombs were found rarely and, when it happened, it was usually during excavation for construction work. And, as I said, I don't recall ever seeing a cordoned-off area anywhere in the west.

Having said that, my experience is mostly based on living in Munich. In other parts of Germany that were more heavily bombarded, things may well be different. Also, the problem may have become more apparent in the time since I left Germany, and particularly in the former East Germany, where clean-up efforts were nothing like they were in the west. (For example, in mid-nineties, there were still many cities in the former East Germany where you would see old bullet holes in the facades of houses that had never been repaired in the fifty years that had passed since the end of the war.) Note that the locations mentioned in the article (Oranienburg, Brandenburg, and Potsdam) are all in the former East Germany.

I'm not trying to minimize the problem. But take some of the article with a grain of salt though:

We get two or three calls a day saying a shell or bomb has been found at construction sites or elsewhere.

That may well be true. But it almost certainly includes absolutely everything, whether live or not, including small stuff, like old hand grenade casings and the like. Only a small fraction of these finds will be live, and only a small fraction will be what you'd call a bomb.

Still, it sure sounds like they do have a serious problem with hazardous waste...

Cheers,

Michi.