European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - December 14, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse A he Hubby a 4 customized trabant nearly 21 feet Long leads a Fasching Parade in Rostock Eastern Germany. The Traci once headed for the junkyard of history below has become a nostalgia item among Many in the East. Traci is again an East German Symbol a 2 by Mary Williams Walsh los Angeles times hat makes people drive trabant Albrecht Reither of Berlin considers the question almost shyly for a moment sitting in an Auto shop decorated with poster sized photos of the tinny to like car East Germany s contribution to the automotive world. How indeed to explain to an outsider Why anyone today would still want to suffer the trabant s noisy two stroke engine Dollhouse Interior the acrid products of its exhaust system the trabant is a Symbol of protest says Reither a Burly spare parts dealer. People Are saying i drove this car for 30 years and i m going to keep driving it. I m not ashamed to be from the East ". Time was Eastern germans wanted to get Clear of anything associated with their communist past from bad Coffee to the ideological water torture of official discourse from the Baleful Traci to the tiresome workplace habit of eating Bologna sandwiches every time a colleague had a birthday in the weeks and months immediately after the Berlin Wall fell people wanted to discard All of these fixtures of socialist life and anything else that had to do with East Germany. Of late however a wave of nostalgia for std cuts Chind Call it nostalgia As Many do has been washing Over Eastern Germany. Today people Are driving their Travis with a vengeance to the Point of joining Traci Outing clubs and parading through the Eastern German Countryside. Shops specializing in made in the East groceries and household products Are opening and it has become socially acceptable to drink Eastern Germany s sugar Sweet Little red Riding Hood sparkling wine and to serve Eastern Germany s More chewy dinner Rolls. Most people have quickly found out that the dream of the Golden West was just an illusion says Reither who had the commercial sense to buy All the Traci parts he could find and who now does a thriving Trade in them. He has made enough Money to buy a Mercedes or a Bow but his sense of Eastern identity keeps him behind the wheel of his 1974 Traci. Eastern germans have had nearly five years now to plumb the Joys of Western capitalism and As Reither says Many have found them wanting. Some have come to the arresting conclusion that they Are worse off today than they were under communism. Many men have lost their jobs. Women have lost child care centers 20 cents a Day practically All households Are paying Many times More for rent Ana sustenance than they were before. And even the Eastern germans who now have made it who have bigger apartments interesting jobs telephones fax machines plausible newspapers strawberries year round even they talk of a certain something that is missing from their lives. It is in part a sense of belonging they know they Aren t East germans any More but five years of unification have convinced them that they do not quite fit into the West either. I Don t know anyone who says they want the whole German democratic Republic Back says Hans Joachim Maaz a practising psychiatrist in the Eastern German City of Halle. What i her about is the Lack of values. People say we Don t want to live in a society where everyone is elbowing their Way to the front we want to Nave a sense of Solidarity. And we want to live in a society where Money does t influence everything even relationships Between friends " As is often the Case College students Are taking the Lead in this anti West p protest. Nostalgia parties a re a rage on campuses All Over the former East. University students show up in polyester clothing that would otherwise never make it out of the darkest Corners of their wardrobes. Steffen Bernhardt who is 27 and old enough to remember what it was like in former times when the student club was twice shut Down by the authorities for minor ideological infractions organized one such party. He says students today Are embracing the symbols and impediments of the repressive system they used to hate. Short subject belgian rift renewed amid celebrations by Paul Ames the associated press when Allied soldiers kicked the nazis out of Belgium 50 years ago thousands thronged the belgian streets to Welcome their liberators. But today Belgium remains torn by the legacy of those who did not cheer. Hundreds of people accused of collaboration Are still deprived of their civil rights. They cannot vote or be elected to office have been banned from government jobs and stripped of pension rights. Some still pay off fines imposed in 1945. Amid this year s events marking the anniversary of Belgium s liberation and the Battle of the bulge a Long and bitter dispute Over collaboration has surfaced anew. As with so Many contentious issues in Belgium a bilingual nation of 10 million people the Call for forgiveness for surviving collaborators is a dispute Between dutch and French speakers. Many in Flanders the dutch speaking Northern half where most of the collaborators lived demand an amnesty. But political groups in Wallonia Belgium s francophone South cannot forgive and forget. What they want is not Justice Jean Gol the Justice minister and head of the Frencl speaking conservative party told the newspaper Lesoir earlier this year. The limits Are unclear. Do we go from pardoning to forgetting from forgetting to negating after the War 405,057 belgians were charged with collaboration and there were 57,254 criminal convictions. Some 250 people were executed and 100,000 people were barred from jobs in government teaching and other professions. Though Many collaborators benefited from pardons in 1948 and 1961, professor Luc Huysse of the Catholic University in Leuyen said up to 2,000 remain without civil rights. Huysse co author of the undigested past a Book on collaboration in Belgium estimates tens of thousands of collaborators and their families also want an amnesty to Clear them of a psychological Burden of guilt since they feel they had been unjustly labelled. He said Belgium s two linguistic Camps have different collective memories of the War years 1940-1944. In Wallonia collaboration Means denunciation and death squads he said. In Flanders they see poor individuals who got caught in the German flemish nationalists feel dutch speakers have been unfairly discriminated against. They say Many who collaborated in traditionally conservative Flanders did so out of fear of communism or to end Belgium s historic domination by francophone rather than out of real sympathy with the nazi occupier. But French speaking belgians have been enraged by comments at a recent flemish nationalist gathering where one speaker claimed the liberation anniversary Marks "50 years of belgian belgian newspapers have reported that prime minister Jean Luc Dehaene May Grant some sort of amnesty next year. That could spark a clash Between his flemish Christian social party and its partners in a government delicately balanced Between French and dutch speaking parties that would disrupt the entire government. Wednesday december 14,1994 the stars and stripes 17
