Speech

Dear Stu Eizenstat, Chairman Berman,  Greg Schneider, Ambassador Merhav, Deputy Secretary Wolin,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you, dear Sarah Bloomfield, for opening the doors of the National Holocaust Memorial Museum to mark this occasion today.  I would also like to thank the survivors who are with us today and who honor us with their presence.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

60 years ago, the then Finance Minister of Israel,

Moshe Sharett, Nahum Goldman and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed an agreement trying to bring - to the degree possible - justice to those who just had witnessed the greatest crime in history, the holocaust of the Jewish people in Europe.

I believe it is impossible today to imagine how the leaders present there in Luxemburg in 1952 must have felt.

Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of a country in ruins, both in the physical and moral sense, met survivors of the Shoa, traumatized by unspeakable horrors, but determined to build a new jewish state, to look forward and to make life possible after the holocaust.

One member of the German delegation later said: “One had the sense that millions of Jewish victims were also there in the room.”

Today, we meet at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Washington, and here again, we hear the whisper of voices from the past.

We can only stand in awe for the leaders of time, who were both so courageous and visionary.

Sixty years of hard work and cooperation between the

Claims Conference and the German Government since followed in order to help Holocaust survivors to live at least the remaining part of their lives in dignity and peace.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude and admiration to the JCC that, over the decades, sucessfully protected the justified interests of the survivors and established for itself a reputation as a hard pressing but fair partner.

I would also like to recognize the role of various US Governments that played a vital role as a catalyst for negotiations on compensations and restitution. The name of Stu Eizenstat has already entered into the history books.

When the agreement was to be signed in 1952, the date and location of the ceremony had to be kept in secret. Too big were the resentments by many who had just survived the Shoa.

Thanks to the forward-looking leaders at the time, the Luxemburg agreement became a starting point for a long march that, over the decades that followed, led to reconciliation and to a unique partnership between the peoples of Germany and Israel.

Germany accepted its historical responsibility for generations to come and continues to do so.

Today, there is new Jewish life flourishing in Germany.

There are countless ties with Israel in the field of culture, science, economics and, most important on the personal and family level.

The security of the state of Israel has become a fundamental guiding principle of Germany’s foreign policy.

Chancellor Merkel, in her speech before the Knesset, called it the “raison d’être” of our country.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I was born in 1952, the very year the Luxemburg Agreement was signed. That I should stand here one day, as Ambassador of a united and internationally respected Germany and as guest of the National Holocaust Memorial Museum, would have been an impossible thought at the time.

What followed is a tale of courage, of leadership, of responsibilty accepted, that can also serve as a beacon of hope in today’s torn world.

The story of the Luxemburg agreement is a story

worth telling our children.