Israeli President Peres Speaks in Berlin on Holocaust Remembrance Day
Speaking in the German parliament on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli President Shimon Peres called the ties that have developed between Germany and Israel unique. “The friendship that was established did not develop at the expense of forsaking the memory of the Holocaust, but from the memory of the dark hours of the past. In view of the joint and decisive decision to look ahead - towards the horizon of optimistic hope. Tikkun Olam - putting the world aright,” Peres said on January 27. The speech was historic in that Peres is the first Israeli President to speak in the Bundestag in Berlin.
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- Israeli President Shimon Peres speaks to the German Bundestag on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
- (© picture alliance / dpa)
Sixty-five years ago, on January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, west of Krakau, Poland. Germany made the day a national day of remembrance for the victims of national socialism in 1996. Since then, a ceremony of remembrance has been held each year in the Bundestag, with those who witnessed the Holocaust first-hand invited to give speeches. The day has also been declared International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations.
In this year’s special session in the German parliament, the Polish historian Professor Feliks Tych, whose parents and siblings were murdered at Treblinka, also addressed the gathered legislators and government leaders. Bundestag President Norbert Lammert also spoke. Taking part in the ceremony were Federal President Horst Köhler, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bundesrat President Jens Böhrnsen and President of the Federal Constitutional Court Professor Hans-Jürgen Papier.
President Peres, accompanied by a delegation of German-born Holocaust survivors, arrived in Berlin on January 25 for an itinerary centered around commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust. On Tuesday, January 26, Federal President Köhler accompanied Peres to a memorial ceremony at Platform 17 at the Grunewald railway station, from where a large part of the 55,000 Berlin Jews were deported to concentration camps from October 1941 to March 1945.
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- President Peres and Federal President Köhler laid wreaths at Platform 17 at the Grunewald railway station, from where a large part of Berlin Jews were deported to concentration camps.
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In his speech to the Bundestag, President Peres, 86, recalled his own experience during the Holocaust. After he was sent to then Palestine at the age of 11, he learned that in his hometown in Belarus, the Nazis had forced all the Jews, including his grandfather, Rabbi Zvi Melzer, into the synagogue and set it on fire. “My grandfather marched in front, together with his family, wrapped in the same Tallith in which I enveloped myself as a kid. The doors were locked from the outside and the wooden structure was torched. And the only remains of the whole community were embers. There were no survivors.”
The Nobel Peace Prize winner said that the Holocaust must not become a barrier against the belief in decency but should forever serve as a warning. “If there is a collective voice for the millions of European Jews, this voice calls upon us to look ahead. To be what the victims could have been and were not. To create anew what we lost when they were annihilated.”
Peres praised the two great statesmen German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who “stretched their hands out one to the other, from the two sides of the abyss.”
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- Peres spoke about his own experience during the Holocaust. He also said that the Holocaust must not become a barrier against the belief in decency but should forever serve as a warning.
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German leaders since then have also continued to strengthen the foundations and ties of friendship, Peres said. He recalled the words of Federal President Köhler in the Israeli Knesset last year, where Köhler said that "‘the responsibility for the Holocaust is part of the German identity.’ We very much appreciate this.”
Peres concluded by speaking of his hope for peace in the Middle East. “Permit us, allow yourselves, to dream and realize the dreams,” Peres said to a long standing ovation.
Later on Wednesday, President Peres received the Walther Rathenau Prize, which honors great achievements in foreign policy. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle delivered the laudatory remarks. The award is named after the German Foreign Minister during the Weimar Republic who was murdered by nationalists in 1922.
