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interview // german // 2:13 Min // 18.06.2008
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The party my parents were functionaries in, was called the ‘German Social Democratic Labour Party in Czechoslovakia’. But the name was a diversion, it was a socialistic, an Austro-Marxian party. Our party did not belong to the ‘1st International’ but to the ‘2.5th International’, the ‘Vienna International’, with the slogan: No social democratic opportunism and no Bolshevistic dogmatism.
We worked according to this guideline, but of course even in this party and in the youth association, which was a part of the party, there were different positions. That showed especially in 1936, when the popular front became relevant, but the politics of the popular front demanded for working closely together with the communists. The ideological discrepancies were known. They were out of question. We shared the same enemy, which was fascism and which had to be fought together - within the popular front. In Léon Blum in France we had the example of a socialist of the popular front, socialists, communists and the radical socialists. That were the civil liberals, who wanted to fight the fascism together and with us it was the same. At the basis nobody asked anymore: “Where do you come from? Are you from the CY, the communistic youth, the socialist youth or the ’bündische Jugend’ (union of several youth associations)?” The question was: „What can you do against fascism? “
Because we followed the example of France, the calling up of German intellectuals from Paris, now all dividing differences on the left had to be put aside, to concentrate the strength against the fascist attack, which was going on everywhere at that time.
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