Survey shows 60% of Germans believe their country has no special obligation towards Jewish state; German doctors apologize for Nazi- era crimes

A recent survey conducted for Stern news magazine found that a large majority of Germans view Israel as "aggressive" and think Germany no longer has a special obligation to the Jewish nation.

Some 59% of those questioned viewed Israel as "aggressive", an increase of 10 percentage points over a similar survey in January 2009.

About 70% said they believed Israel pursued its interests without consideration for other nations, Stern said in a pre-release of its Thursday edition, up 11 percentage points from three years ago.

And 67 years after the end of the Nazi regime, 60% said Germany had no special obligation towards Israel, while a third believed the contrary, according to the survey of 1,002 people conducted on May 15 and 16.

Meanwhile, Germany’s medical association has adopted a declaration apologizing for sadistic experiments and other actions of doctors under the Nazis.

In the statement adopted earlier this week in Nuremberg, the association said many doctors under the Nazis were “guilty, contrary to their mission to heal, of scores of human rights violations and we ask the forgiveness of their victims, living and deceased, and of their descendants.”

In addition to performing pseudo-scientific experiments on concentration camp inmates, German doctors also were key to the Nazi’s program of forced sterilization or euthanasia of the mentally ill or others deemed “unworthy of life.”

The medical association says “these crimes were not the actions of individual doctors but involved leading members of the medical community” and should be taken as a warning for the future. AP contributed to the report (Copyright 2012 © Yedioth Internet 05/25/12)