Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Once, while riding the bus from
Munich out to Dachau, I learned a les-
son about the tyranny of the majority.
En route to the infamous concentra-
tion camp memorial, I sat next to an
old German woman. I smiled at her
weakly as if to say, “I don't hold your
people's genocidal atrocities against
you.” She glanced at me and sneered
down at my camera. Suddenly, sur-
prising me with her crusty but fl u-
ent English, she ripped into me. “You
tourists come here not to learn, but to
hate,” she seethed.
Pulling the loose skin down from
a long-ago-strong upper arm, she
showed me a two-sided scar. “When
I was a girl, a bullet cut straight
through my arm,” she said. “Another
bullet killed my father. The war took
many good people. My father ran a
Grüss Gott
shop.”
I was stunned by her rage. But
I sensed desperation on her part to
simply unload her story on one of the
hordes of tourists who tramp daily
through her hometown to ogle at an
icon of the Holocaust.
I asked, “What do you mean, a
Grüss Gott
shop?” She explained that
in Bavaria, shopkeepers greet custom-
ers with a “
Grüss Gott
” (“May God
greet you”). During the Third Reich,
it was safer to change to the Nazi
greeting, “
Sieg Heil
.” It was a hard
choice. Each shopkeeper had to make
it. Everyone in Dachau knew which
shops were
Grüss Gott
shops and
which were
Sieg Heil
shops. Over time
there were fewer and fewer
Grüss
Gott
shops. Pausing, as if mustering
the energy for one last sentence, she
stood up and said, “My father's shop
was a
Grüss Gott
shop to the end,”
then stepped of the bus.
Confl icts between the majority
and the minority persist in today's
Europe. Consider Northern Ireland,
where the population is divided
between Protestants (supporters of
British rule) and Catholics (who iden-
tify with the Irish). While the familiar
Union Jack of the UK is the “oi cial”
fl ag of Northern Ireland, minority
Catholics who'd like to see Ireland
united see it as a symbol of oppres-
sion. Unfortunately, they no longer
consider it their fl ag, and call it “the
Butcher's Apron” instead.
For a lesson in the power of sym-
bolism, visit a town where about two-
thirds of the community is Protestant
and one-third is Catholic. These towns
can be decked out like a Union Jack
fantasy...or nightmare, if you happen
to be Catholic. The curbs are painted
red, white, and blue. Houses fl y huge
British fl ags. Streets lead under trel-
lises blotting out the sky with fl apping
Union Jacks. (Not too long ago, many
towns like these even came with the
remains of a burned-out Catholic
church.) A Catholic walking down a
street strewn with this British sym-
bolism can only be quiet and accept
it. To independence-minded Catho-
lics, the Union Jack symbolizes not a
united nation, but the tyranny of the
majority. The result: There is no real
fl ag of Northern Ireland.
Until experiences like these in
Germany and in Northern Ireland
humanized the notion of “tyranny of
the majority,” I never really grasped
the sadness of a society where a
majority-rules mentality can, when
