Pot, meet Kettle: Rolf Hochhuth attacks Günter Grass

The scale of attacks on Günter Grass for his poem (see my last post) has reached abusrd proportions. The New York Times has a good summary of the controversy so far.  But now another well-known writer has added his voice to the chorus of criticism.  Rolf Hochhuth, who broke dramatic ground with his great 1962 play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) published an open letter to Grass in Merkur: 

Auch ich, […]schäme mich als Deutscher Deiner anmaßenden Albernheit, den Israelis verbieten zu wollen, ein U-Boot deutscher Produktion zu kaufen, das möglicherweise allein ihrem kleinen Staat die letzte Sicherheit geben kann, von einer engst benachbarten Atommacht buchstäblich über Nacht nicht ausgerottet zu werden! Du bist geblieben, was Du freiwillig geworden bist: Der SS-Mann, der das 60 Jahre verschwiegen hat, aber den Bundeskanzler Kohl anpöbelte, weil der Hand in Hand mit einem amerikanischen Präsidenten einen Soldaten-Friedhof besuchte, auf dem auch 40 SS-Gefallene liegen

(As a German I'm alos ashamed of your arrogant stupidity that you want to prevent Israel from buying a German submarine that quite possibly would be the last line of defense for this tiny country against a nuclear power next door that could wipe it out over night. You are still what you always were: the SS man who kept silent about it for 60 years but who scorned Chancellor Helmut Kohl because he visited a cemetary hand in hand with an American president where 40 SS members were also buried.) 

Hochhuth should have kept his mouth shut.  Back in 2005 he disgraced himself by giving an interview to the neo-fascist weekly Junge Freiheit where he praised his good friend – the Holocaust-denier David Irving.