German Bundestag commemorates Holocaust Memorial Day | News | TheTeCHyWorLD

German lawmakers gathered in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  The day marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis’ Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland, 77 years ago. It remembers all victims of the National Socialist regime, including the 6 million murdered Jews.

Memories of a dark time

Speaking as a guest of honor, 87-year-old Holocaust survivor Inge Auerbacher told of her memories as a small child before she was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia at the age of 7 in 1942. “I still have very clear memories of that dark time, a time of terror and hate,” Auerbacher said.  Auerbacher, who has lived in the United States for the past 75 years, said she had been the youngest of some 1,100 people on the train to Theresienstadt. “My parents and I were among the very few who survived.” GIving her speech, Auerbacher wore a butterfly broach to remember some 1.5 million Jewish children who were murdered. She described the horrific conditions at the camp, used as a transit facility for those who were sent to the gas chambers. “There were frequent epidemics caused by the lack of sanitation and the overcrowded conditions we lived in. Typhus was one of the worst dangers we faced. Rats, mice, fleas, lice, and bedbugs were our constant companions.” “There were also frequent deportations, mostly to Auschwitz.” Auerbacher also lamented what she described as a return of antisemitism to many countries of the world, including Germany. “This disease needs to be eradicated as swiftly as possible,” she said.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

  Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site

  A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

  Wannsee House

  The villa on Berlin’s Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the “Final Solution,” the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

  Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

  Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground “Place of Information” holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

  Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals

  Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin’s Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

  Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds

  Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

  German Resistance Memorial Center

  The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it’s the German Resistance Memorial Center.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

  Bergen-Belsen Memorial

  The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

  Buchenwald Memorial

  Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

  Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims

  Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem “Auschwitz” by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. “Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears,” it reads.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

  ‘Stolpersteine’ — stumbling blocks as memorials

  In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began a project to confront Germany’s Nazi past. Brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former houses of Nazi victims provide details about the people and their date of deportation and death, if known. More than 45,000 “Stolpersteine” have been laid in 18 countries across Europe. It’s the world’s largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

  Brown House in Munich

  Right next to the “Führerbau,” where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the “Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism” opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime. Author: Max Zander

‘The power of a human story’

The president of the Israeli parliament, Mickey Levy, spoke about the need — within the walls of the historic Bundestag building — to remember the fragility of democracy. “We are reminded of our duty to protect it at all costs.” “Keeping alive remembrance of the Holocaust is a difficult task that must be shouldered by each generation anew,” said Levy, speaking of “often incomprehensible” statistics.  “The 6 million Jews murdered are 6 million individual stories. Stories of lives not lived, stories of people who are no longer with us,” said Levy, paying tribute to Auerbacher for her description of that period. “You have described your memories of the Holocaust, and in doing so you have created a unique voice. This voice — which shows the power of a human story to really get into people’s and to communicate in such a poignant way.” “Thank you for making the incomprehensible comprehensible,” he said.  Bundestag President Bärbel Bas gave a speech warning against historical revisionism and ethnonationalism. “Our country bears a special responsibility the genocide of the European Jews is a German crime, yet it is also a past which is relevant to all,” said Bas. “Not only Germans, and not only Jews.” “Together with many others worldwide, we are taking a stance on remembrance of the Holocaust. A stance against xenophobia and against antisemitism.” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as well as Bundesrat President Bodo Ramelow, were also among those present at the ceremony. Music for the commemoration included pieces by two composers who were also sent to Theresienstadt, played by musicians from the Prague Opera. Two songs of the Jewish resistance against the Nazi occupation in Eastern Europe were also sung.  January 27 was declared a legal day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism in Germany in 1996. Every year, the number of remaining Holocaust survivors in Germany — and the living connection with one of modern history’s greatest atrocities — continues to dwindle. More than 15,000 survivors died in 2021, according to the Holocaust Survivors’ Rights Authority, a government department. 

Duty to keep the memory alive

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday evening called for the memory of Nazi war crimes to be kept alive.  “We remember the millions of people who were deported to concentration camps, tortured and murdered there,” he said during a visit to the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.  “They were imprisoned here because they were political opponents of the regime, because they were Jews, because they were counted among the Sinti and Roma, because they were homosexuals or because they were prisoners of war.” The responsibility today, Steinmeier said, was to firmly counter all forms of anti-Semitism, racism and discrimination. More than 200,000 people were imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp between 1936 and 1945. Tens of thousands died through hunger, disease, forced labor, medical experiments, mistreatment or systematic extermination.    European Union leaders on Wednesday pledged they would confront the rise of antisemitism and Holocaust denial witnessed during the coronavirus pandemic. European Council President Charles Michel said the lessons of the Holocaust were now “more relevant than ever.”
rc/aw (dpa, epd, AFP, Reuters)