Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

for transport to the extermination camps and by railway systems
transporting them without questioning; in the case of certain Central
and East European countries the involvement took place by
killings of thousands of Jews at first without orders by the occupants,
later by involvement in the Nazi terror apparatus);
L. for a number of years the social democrats were considered by
the Stalinists of being their enemies, branded as “social fascists”;
whereas social democrats in a number of countries were among
the first victims of the Stalinists;
M. no communist regime was democratic but that there are substantial
differences in the use of the terms “Stalinist”, “soviet” and
“communist”, that the character of the Soviet Union was different
over time and that there were differences between communist
regimes in other countries as it has been the case concerning communist
parties in Western European countries;
N. communists in a number of countries were among the first victims
of authoritarian, fascist and Nazi-dictatorships; in some cases,
though only after the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Nazis, they
fought in close cooperation with the allied forces against Nazioccupation
giving thousands of lives; deploring that many of those
resistant communists were among the first victims of Stalinist
regimes installed in their respective countries;
O. the struggle of communists after World War II who fought together
with all kinds of democrats against the dictatorships in Portugal,
Spain and Greece – many of them being imprisoned, tortured
and murdered- should be remembered;
P. the decisions adopted in Tehran and Yalta give tremendous and
shared responsibility to the allied leaders in World War II for the division
of Europe into two blocks with as a consequence that millions
suffered from suppression in both blocks for several decades; paradoxically
those suppressed in the West were told that they were
part of the “free world”, while those being suppressed in the East
were told that they were living in a “world free from exploitation”;
Q. political forces on the right in certain countries collaborated
with the Nazi-regime and supported its ideology; nowadays right
wing political forces in the same countries portray themselves as
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