Here's one thing that has always puzzled me. How can those of Jewish descent purchase things like Mercedes Benzs
Well, I would never buy a Mercedes or BMW if I had the money, but I would buy a Volkswagen.
My view is that the Nazis were evil, not all Germans were, and certainly not all Germans today are, Nazis.
The post-WWII generations have done a very good job of trying to come to grips with their history and to insure that it couldn't happen again. To me, to boycott all things German today is like saying that the Nazis were inherently German. By that I mean it is to say it couldn't have happened anywhere else, that the Germans have a special capacity for evil that no one else does. I know that after the war that was a popular opinion because people generally didn't want to think it could happen here (wherever "here" was) and some people hold by that today. However, I think it is very naive and childish to think that way.
Many Germans resisted (I know a woman who's father was in and out of German jails through WWII for being anti-Nazi and a German citizen). Many Poles resisted, many helped, at least with the "Jewish Problem". Same with the French- as romanticized as the Resistance has become most people lost sight of the fact that far more Frenchmen collaborated than resisted (of course, most did neither). Many US companies (notably Ford, Chase Bank, IBM, Dow Chemicals among many others) had close relationships with the Nazis, and some of their European subsidararies even were close to the Nazis during WWII. The Japanese were German allies and did some pretty rotten things themselves (one of my dad's uncles is still MIA in the Pacific BTW). The Germans weren't the only ones involved, and they aren't inherently evil. Many others had culpability as well. To boycott any company or group with ties to the Nazis in their past won't leave you much.
If the Germans as a people don't hold some special evil, then not all Germans (especially those today) are culpable for what happened.
So I think those who buy Mercedes, BMW, and some other German products are mostly people who think like I do above, but without the rest.
When looking at a German company (or a company of any nationality with Nazi ties in its history) I tend to look at its history before, during AND since WWII.
I will never buy a Mercedes because they have shown themselves to be the same kind of company since WWII that they were during WWII, no remorse or repentance. During the '70s and '80s Mercedes reported union organizers in their South American factories to the authorities in fascist Argentina even when they knew the people who were on the lists they gave the government were "disappearing".
I will never buy BMW because they have done all they could to avoid reparations to the slave laborers who they employed (and profited from) during WWII.
I would buy Volkswagen because they have no Nazi ties. Yes, the original Bug was designed on Hitler's orders. However, the company we know as Volkswagen didn't exist until after WWII when the British saw a need for people in their zone of occupation to have reliable and affordable transportation. There was already the design on the books so they opened up the factory in Wolksburg that came to be the Volkswagen company we know today.
