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Bundestag commemorates Nazi victims

(© picture-alliance/dpa)

Sixty-four years ago today, on January 27, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp.  On this occasion, the German Bundestag remembered the victims of National Socialism in a memorial service.  In their speeches, Federal President Horst Köhler and president of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert called on Germans to keep the memory alive and to pass it on to future generations.

Also attending the memorial service were Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, president of the Bundesrat (the upper chamber of parliament) Peter Müller, and president of the Federal Constitutional Court Hans-Jürgen Papier.  Among the guests of honor, Mr. Lammert welcomed those who spoke at the 2005 and 2006 memorial services, Arno Lustiger and Ernst Cramer, as well as a group of leaders of international survivor organizations and committees, including survivors from Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenbürg, Mittelbau-Dora, Ravensbrück, and Sachsenhausen.

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Federal President Horst Köhler and Chancellor Angela Merkel attend the memorial service of the Bundestag on January 27, 2009

(© picture-alliance/dpa)

With its many days of remembrance, the year 2009 reflects the highs and lows of Germany’s checkered history in the 20th century.  The remembrance of the victims of National Socialism will be a prevailing theme on each of the coming commemorative days –  the 60th anniversary of the Basic Law (Germany’s constitution), the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II, the 90th anniversary of the Weimar constitution, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and, especially, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany.

When there are no longer any living eye witnesses, the major task will be to pass on the lessons drawn from history to future generations, to our children, Lammert said in his remarks.  The active engagement and volunteer work performed by young Europeans is heartening to Lammert, who stressed, "the younger generation is finding forms of remembrance and will draw their lessons from the past."

He continued to say that it was up to us to ensure that "we never again experience such times."  According to Lammert, the Holocaust remains a perpetual warning to be vigilant and not to remain silent, "when we see our fundamental democratic convictions or the rule of law at risk or when people fall victim to violence, especially when it is ideologically motivated."  This means that our remembrance should never end.

Federal President Horst Köhler said in his speech that Auschwitz was an attempt to wipe out an entire people.  "What shocks and appalls us so about Auschwitz is not alone the dimension of the genocide but the systematic nature of it, the machinery."

The sorrow for the victims, the shame of the abominable actions, and the will to reconciliation with the Jewish people and the opponents of the war had led to the roots of "our republic," Köhler said.  "Human dignity is inviolable."

Köhler expressed the wish that the many good projects to promote remembrance already underway in Germany would be emulated.  He further hoped that , above all, young people would continue their search to give a face and name to the victims and their perpetrators – "where they lived and worked, where they could’ve been our neighbors."

Source: Deutscher Bundestag