German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) have demanded on the occasion of Holocaust memorial day, a resolute struggle against anti-Semitism. “This day allows us to remember, what can cause racism, hatred, and enmity”, said Merkel in her Video Podcast. Each of us has the task “to also carry a responsibility to ensure that we show zero tolerance against anti-Semitism, xenophobia, hatred, and racial hatred”. “And that, unfortunately, in our current time of great urgency.”
Maas pointed out in a guest post for the “world on Sunday” the fact that the time move closer to the witnesses by the Nazi injustice to stand, could reports. “Our memorial culture must adapt to that. (…) What we need now are new approaches to take advantage of historical experiences for the present. Our history must be a reminder to a knowledge of the project.“
At the Holocaust remembrance day on 27 January. January the six million murdered European Jews and other victims of national socialism. 27. January 1945 were freed by Soviet soldiers, the Survivors of the Auschwitz extermination camp. The camp is a symbol for the Nazi crimes. The North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Armin Laschet (CDU), has put on Sunday at the memorial site of the “black wall” with a group of Jewish, Muslim and Christian young people in a wreath. The wall is a faithful reproduction of a wall on which the national socialists prisoners to the firing let up. Together with the Chairman of the Union of progressive Jews in Germany, Walter Homolka, Secretary-General, Irith Michel, the son, and of the NRW-anti-Semitism Sabine Leutheusser officer-Schnarrenberger (FDP) thoughts of the victim.
Maas requested that a reminder should be places of learning. “Who is born today, for example, the pogrom night time is just as far as at the time of my birth, a Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The changed the memory, creates more distance.“ The Green-Chairman Anna Lena Baerbock, and Robert Habeck said: “The lesson from the terrible crime it must be, enlightenment and civic courage in daily life again and again to anchor and deepen.”