Yom Hashoah Holocaust Commemoration, May 4, 2008 at Faneuil Hall
Remarks by the German Consul General in Boston

I.
In a few days, exactly 75 years ago, on May 10, 1933, in the center of Berlin, organized by Nazi students, instigated by the Nazi regime, 20.000 books went up in flames: books by Jewish and Non-Jewish German authors, books by authors the Nazis considered to be “degenerate” in their outrageous and rascist ideology. These were only the first book burnings. Others would follow.

„Das war Vorspiel nur. Dort, wo man Buecher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.“
„That was mere prelude. Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”

This was not written in May 1933, but in 1821 by the German poet and essayist Heinrich Heine (1797–1856).
How did he know that people who eliminate books and ideas, are also capable of eliminating human beings?
He did not, he could not, he could not even imagine what some 120 years later would become cruel reality in his fatherland, in Germany:

Where they burned books in 1933, they ended up with the extermination of an entire people, of 6 million European Jews, murdered by Germans, at German hands, on German command. Murdered because they were born Jews – a crime against humanity, unparalleled, unprecedented, without comparison.

Honored members of the Jewish community of Greater Boston,
Honorable Mayor Menino, Mrs. Menino,
Honorable colleagues
Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Children

I have come today – on this Yom HaShoah, a day of mourning – to pay my profound respects: to the Holocaust survivors and their families, to those who have survived, some of them as children, some of them hidden by good people.

I have come today to pay my profound respects to those many who have not survived, to those who have perished, to those who have no graves where we can mourn them. I have come to commemorate together with you the victims of the Holocaust. As it has so often happened in the past years, even the skies are crying on Yom Hashoah in Boston.

Let me quote the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel in her speech to the Knesset in Jerusalem on March 18, 2008, in celebrating the 60th birthday of the State of Israel this month.

“The Shoah is a source of great shame for us Germans. I bow before the victims, I bow before the survivors and before all those who helped them to survive.”

Mrs. Lantos,
Mrs. Lantos Swett:

Let me also express my heartfelt condolences to you and your family. We all owe a great debt to your husband and father. His clear vision and strong voice for preserving human dignity around the world inspired Americans and Europeans.
Your husband’s and father’s willingness as a Holocaust survivor to reach out to my country held special significance to every German who met him. “He was a friend in the best sense of the word” wrote the German Ambassador in Washington, Klaus Scharioth, in a letter of condolences on February 13.
My condolences again.

II.
As my time in Boston as Consul-General comes to an end, allow me to look back for a moment: I still remember the Yom HaShoah 2005 ceremony, the first such ceremony a German Consul-General was invited to speak at in Boston.

I saw this invitation as a sign of hope and trust in my country. I felt honoured when you, Israel Arbeiter, told me then that the speeches made by then Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Federal Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz had made such a deep impression that the Jewish Community of Greater Boston had decided that the time had now come, to invite the German Consul-General in Boston to speak.

I was overwhelmed by the deep respect and admiration for this gesture on the part of my hosts and the Holocaust survivors in particular. I feel this just as strongly today as I did then. The human greatness and indeed uniqueness manifest in this gesture of the community here is something I will never forget.

Would I have ever been able to reach out, to hold out my hands as you did – inviting a German to talk on a Holocaust Memorial Day? Would I have ever been able to reach out if my beloved father or mother, or my son or my wife or my entire family or myself had gone through what you – survivors - have told me of your sufferings and of the death of family members and friends?

In your accounts you told of sufferings we cannot even imagine, but every single word is unfortunately true.
We will preserve your past because without remembrance and sorrow there can never be reconciliation and a better and more humane future, not for us and not for our children.

I learnt from you over these four years in a very personal way that history can be a bridge in fact, a bridge between Jews and Germans, young and old, Jews and Non-Jews.
Boston is a city with four German-Jewish dialogue groups, of which the one in Belmont will celebrate its 15th anniversary this month.

Certainly, the relationship between Jews and Germans will always be a special one, one over which the Holocaust casts a dark and chilling shadow. It will never – by no means – be normal. But you all showed us that history can be a two-way-street:
I am so grateful that Israel Arbeiter will travel to Germany this summer to talk at schools to give his personal accounts, maybe even to talk at a state parliament and to connect with people, like he is doing here.

This year the German International School of Boston took part for the first time in the Israel Arbeiter Essay contest „Light in the darkness.“ This invitation again was an initiative by the Jewish community here.
First contacts are being established, on Israel Arbeiter’s initiative, between the German School and the Solomon Schechter school. The head of the German School, Christian Nitschke, and Harry Bloom of the Solomon Schechter School are here today.

And for the first time in 2008, at your invitation, students and teachers from the German Inter¬national School in Boston are with us on this Yom HaShoah. The small student delegation consists of

Nadine Eggenberger (16)
Maurizia Hartert (13)
Nicole Eggenberger (12)
Judith Hollmann (13)
Eilianys Lopez (12)
They are accompanied by the following teachers:
Christian Nitschke
Uschi Niethammer
Uta Fuchs
Ineke Groeneveld
Christine Raunser.

III.
It is this generation of young Germans students who stand next in line to one day assume responsibility, not for the Holocaust, but responsibility for making sure that what led up to the Holocaust, will never again be allowed to take root and flourish.

It is about assuming responsibility for the consequences of the past, to take the lessons learnt as mission for the future. “Remembrance is active”, the German Ambassador in Washington so rightly pointed out it in a speech at the annual Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony in Alexandria, VA, on April 29, 2008. We must fight anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia as soon as they raise their head. If Anti-Semites stand up, we all are Jews. If the state of Israel is threatened, it is a threat against all of us, as the German Chancellor said during her latest Israel visit.

We must speak up, when Holocaust deniers like the Iranian President spread their vile message. Holocaust denial is the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on survivors and their families, on the families of the victims and the victims themselves.

These young Germans are here with us today, to pass on the torch. They will pass on what they have heard today from you, they will pass on your memory and your legacy at this critical point in time when the memories of the generation of survivors, contemporary witnesses, is being handed down to the generation of children and children’s children. This responsibility to build the lessons of the past into our agenda for the future always means for us Germans, more than for others, a special responsibility. On this special responsibility there is consensus in Germany – a consensus shared by all parties, all German Governments and by a strong, vigilant and active civil society. This civil society, engaged and involved citizens of all ages and all layers of society, is perhaps the most distinct feature in modern Germany. A strong civil society makes the difference!

Your hope and trust in a new Germany of today will not be disappointed. We will live up to it! This is perhaps the most precious legacy, we - the generation of parents - can hand down to the generation of our sons and daughters who are with us today and who will follow in our footsteps one day.

Thank you for giving me once again the opportunity to share some thoughts with you.

And on behalf of all three of us Vorwerks, on behalf of my wife Heide, myself and my son Alexander - in 2005, when he first came with us as a student at Brookline High, now a student at Northeastern, where he will finish - I would like to express and manifest our deep respect and gratitude for all that you have given to us, for all your confidence, your warmth and – your friendship shown to us over these past four years. You changed our life.

Auf Wiedersehen und Danke Schoen.

.

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