As Young Greens, we often get the reputation of being a bunch of teenagers who like get high and talk politics. Despite that this is largely an incorrect stereotype for many Young Greens across the world, it does speak true about one point. It has long been Green parties and their youth counterparts across the…
Category: Featured
Austrian Young Greens on Marijuana Legalization
As Young Greens, we often get the reputation of being a bunch of teenagers who like get high and talk politics. Despite that this is largely an incorrect stereotype for many Young Greens across the world, it does speak true about one point. It has long been Green parties and their youth counterparts across the…
Global Divestment Day: Climate Justice for Environmental Refugees
By Joshua Miguel Makalintal (FYEG, Junge Grüne) 13-14 February marks the world’s first Global Divestment Day. Climate movements worldwide have participated in this weekend’s fight to urge governments and investors to radically divest from fossil fuels. There is no doubt that we are experiencing an unprecedented climate change that threatens the future of the planet…
Rethinking a Common Past: A Polish Perspective 70 Years After the Holocaust
By Aleksandra Kołeczek, Ostra Zieleń/Polish Young Greens There are hardly any Jews left in Poland nowadays, but the common past bounded us for good. The most painful and terrible event in that past – the Holocaust, dominates our relations. Around one hundred thousand Jews visit Poland every year to visit concentration camps and memorials commemorating…
The Swedish Tongue and the Holocaust: A Swedish hindsight 70 years later
By Anna Tranberg, Swedish Young Greens In 1943 the Israeli poet Natan Alterman wrote a poem of gratitude to thank Sweden and the Swedes for opening their borders for Jewish refugees. “And while Sweden declared: ‘Let them in!’ while referring To the exiled Jews who were running away, The entire Swedish people couldn’t speak or…
The Holocaust from a Floridian: An American hindsight 70 years later
It was 1998 and I was eight years old living in Jacksonville, Florida, USA. For a school assignment, we were to choose historical figures and give presentations and introduce ourselves as if we were them. I had chosen Anne Frank as I had just finished reading her diary and it seemed like a great choice….
Remembrance, recognition and identity: A German hindsight 70 years later
By Paul F., Grüne Jugend 70 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Germany is far from having an open and tolerant society: many people want to leave the country’s dark history behind, right-wing movements are on the verge of entering the German Parliament (1), and the head of the Rhineland-Palatinate CDU (a regional branch…
Concentration Camp School Trips: A British hindsight 70 years later
I have never had the sheer awfulness of the Holocaust illustrated more vividly than when I visited the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany as part of a school history trip. Though the buildings of the camp are now empty and sanitised, their histories neatly explained on modern information placards, it was hard not to feel…
Germany – Champion of Remembrance? – An German hindsight 70 years later
By Jamila Schäfer, Member of the Executive Committee of Grüne Jugend, Germany “A new categorical imperative has been imposed by Hitler upon unfree mankind: to arrange their thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen,” says philosopher Adorno in his book “Negative Dialectics.” According to this imperative,…
The Holocaust In the Eyes of My Grandmother: An American hindsight 70 years later
By Guy Tabachnick (photo of Lucy and Friends in Rivoli, Italy in a Displaced Persons Camp, ca 1946-47. Taken from www.lucymandelstam.com) Last week, my mom sent me video of her mother’s testimony given in 1989 at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial. It’s on YouTube now, in three hour-long sections: my grandmother’s childhood in Vienna; the…