The reason was obvious. As Grass put it in a recent interview with the weekly Die Woche: "Because the crimes we Germans are responsible for were and are so dominant, we didn't have the energy left to tell of our own sufferings.''The long silence about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff was probably unavoidable - and necessary.
By unreservedly owning up to their country's monstrous crimes in the Second World War, Germans have managed to win acceptance abroad, marginalize (使……不得势) the neo- Nazis at home and make peace with their neighbors.
Today's unified Germany is more prosperous and stable than at any time in its long, troubled history. For that, a half century of willful forgetting about painful memories like the German Titanic was perhaps a reasonable price to pay. But even the most politically correct Germans believe that they' ye now earned the right to discuss the full historical record. Not to equate German suffering with that of its victims, but simply to acknowledge a terrible tragedy.
21. Why does the author say the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff was the worst tragedy in maritime history?
A) It was attacked by Russian torpedoes.
B) Most of its passengers were frozen to death.
C) Its victims were mostly women and children.
D) It caused the largest number of casualties.
22. Hundreds of families dropped into the sea when
A) a strong ice storm tilted the ship
B) the cruise ship sank all of a sudden
C) the badly damaged ship leaned toward one side
D) the frightened passengers fought desperately for lifeboats
23. The Wilhelm Gustloff tragedy was little talked about for more than half a century because Germans
A) were eager,to win international acceptance
B) felt guilty for their crimes in World War II
C)~ad been pressured to keep silent about it
D) were afraid of offending their neighbors
24. How does Gunter Grass revive the memory of the Wilhelm Gustloff tragedy?
A) By presenting the horrible scene of the torpedo attack.
B) By describing the ship's sinking in great detail.
C) By giving an interview to the weekly Die Woche.
D) By depicting the survival of a young pregnant woman.
25. It can be learned from the passage that Germans no longer think that
A) they will be misunderstood if they talk about the Wilhelm Gustloff tragedy
B) the Wilhelm Gustloff tragedy is a reasonable price to pay for the nation's past misdeeds
C) Germany is responsible for the horrible crimes it committed in World War II
D) it-is wrong to equate their sufferings with those of other countries
Passage Two Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage.
Given the lack of fit between gifted students and their schools, it is not surprising that such students often have little good to say 'about their school experience. In one study of 400 adul who had achieved distinction in all areas of life, researchers found that three-fifths of these individuals either did badly in school or were unhappy in school.
Few MacArthur Prize fellows, winners of the MacArthur Award for creative accomplishment, had good things to say about their precollegiate schooling if they had not been placed in advanced programs. Anecdotal (名人轶事) reports support this. Pablo Picasso, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Oliver Goldsmith, and William Butler Yeats all disliked school. So did Winston Churchill, who almost failed out of Harrow, an elite British school. About Oliver Goldsmith, one of his teachers remarked, "Never was so dull a boy." Often these children realize that they know more than their teachers, and their teachers often feel that these children are arrogant, inattentive, or unmotivated.Some of these gifted people may have done poorly in school because their, gifts were not scholastic.
Maybe we can account for Picasso in this way. But most fared poorly in school not because they lacked ability but because they found school unchallenging and consequently lost interest. Yeats described the lack of fit between his mind and school: "Because I had found it difficult to attend to anything less interesting than my own thoughts, I was difficult to teach." As noted earlier, gifted children of all kinds tend to be strong-willed nonconformists. Nonconformityand stubbornness (and Yeats's level of arrogance and self-absorption) are likely to lead to Conflicts with teachers.
When highly gifted students in any domain talk about what was important to the development of their abilities, they are far more likely to mention their families than their schools or teachers. A writing prodigy (神童) studied by Da
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