Martin Hohmann is Germany's sacrifice du jour to political correctness. The parliament member stated this month, "Jews were active in great numbers in the [Bolshevik] leadership as well as in the Cheka firing squads," followed by accusations of anti-Semitism and calls for resignation.
Norman Podhoretz has similarly noted "the fact...that revolutionaries of Jewish origin played so important a role in bringing Communism to Russia" (Commentary, June 1985). Is he also an anti-Semite?
Hohmann further remarked: "...those Jews who were committed to Bolshevism and to the revolution had already cut themselves off from religion. They were Jews according to background and upbringing, but their outlook was that of burning hatred against all religion. It was similar with the National Socialists."
Not exactly neo-Nazi sentiments there. (Bolshevism's catastrophic consequences for Jews didn't stop Jews like David Ben-Gurion from lauding Lenin as "a great man" and "giant of thought." "There is a man," Ben-Gurion wrote, "with a will of iron who worried little about human life and the blood of innocent victims of the revolution.")
The Central Council of Jews in Germany might sue Hohmann for inciting hatred. There's a great way to exemplify tolerance.
Germany's Schuldkomplex doesn't look to be ending anytime soon, which would be merely unseemly if not for its damage to free expression.