News from Europe

Statue of Lenin erected in Germany

A statue of Vladimir Lenin has been unveiled in Gelsenkirchen in North Rhine-Westphalia (West Germany). This is an initiative of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD). Its representatives boast that it is the first monument of a communist dictator unveiled in western Germany.

 

The statue of Lenin is over two metres high and was originally sculpted in Czechoslovakia in 1957. It was placed on a small pedestal in front of the party’s headquarters. During the unveiling of the monument, MLPD members waved red flags. The whole event was presented as part of broad leftist protests shaking Western countries today.

“It’s clear: the time for monuments of racists, anti-Semites, fascists, anti-communists and other relics of the past is over,” said MLPD head Gabi Fechtner. As she said, Lenin was “an avant-garde thinker of global importance, an early fighter for freedom and democracy.”

About fifty people demonstrated against the construction of the monument. At night, Nazi symbols were painted in several places in the city: swastikas, SS runes and Nazi slogans; the Jewish cemetery was also ravaged.

“It is difficult to accept that such a monument was erected in Gelsenkirchen. But we have to live with it,” commented the mayor of the city, Frank Baranowski from the socialist SPD. However, he did not criticise Lenin for his murderous politics and ideology, talking only about the monument as leading to “blind worship of the individual.”

Source: pch24.pl

Image: rc.nl

Leave a reply